538 



[Nov. 



VARIETIES, SCIENTIFIC AND MISCELLANEOUS. 



Captain Parry'* Expedition. On the 

 29ih of September, Captain Parry, having 

 left the Hecla at Longhope in the Orkneys, 

 returned to town, accompanied by Mr. 

 Beverly, the surgeon to the expedition, to 

 announce the total failure of his last at- 

 tempt to penetrate to the pole. The inten- 

 tion of this enterprising navigator was to 

 have proceeded with the vessel to the 

 verge of the ice, and then to have crossed 

 this latter in sledges drawn by reindeer, 

 so contrived as to serve for boats when- 

 ever an opening in the ice left the water 

 clear. At Hammerfest, on the coast of 

 Lapland, the supply of reindeer, snow- 

 shoes, &c, was procured ; but, upon arriv- 

 ing at Spitzbergen, where the vessel was to 

 have been laid up, the harbour was found 

 to be closed with ice; and, the Hecla 

 having got entangled in it, it was not till 

 May 27 that the boats could be employed, 

 and the Hecla was left in latitude 81. 62'. 

 The ice, however, soon breaking up, to 

 proceed at this time with the boats was 

 found impracticable ; and a delay ensued 

 till the 19th of June, when they succeeded 

 in penetrating 1. 39'. more to the north- 

 ward : but the ice was so rotten, and alto- 

 gether so different from what they had 

 been taught to expect, that the passage 

 over it became indescribably laborious 

 the boats, on some occasions, being neces- 

 sarily unloaded and reloaded twenty times 

 in a day. No field of ice was found to ex- 

 tend unbroken more than three miles ; and 

 at length they found that, owing to a cur- 

 rent setting to the southward, they were, 

 after three days of most severe exertion, 

 and ^describing a distance of eighteen 

 miles, two miles farther to the southward 

 than at starting. The reindeer being use- 

 less, the officers and men were harnessed 

 to the tackle, and their food only about 

 nineteen ounces of prepared biscuit-pow- 

 der, with a pint of warm water per twenty- 

 four hours. The physical strength, not 

 the spirits, of the party becoming gradually 

 exhausted by the hard life they led, and 

 the obstacles to their progress multiplying 

 before them, the accomplishment of the 

 object in view seemed utterly impracti- 

 cable. When the boats, on their return, 

 got into an open sea, they were fifty-six 

 hours pulling under a severe snow-storm, 

 and the wind occasionally blowing hard j 

 and, as the scurvy had began to appear, 

 it was with the greatest difficulty they got 

 on at all. At length, however, they re- 

 joined the Hecla, which, during their ab- 

 sence, had been forced high and dry upon 

 the coast by the irresistible pressure of the 

 ice, which a heavy gale had detached : 

 her cables had been cut, and the anchors 



lost. Much valuable time was occupied 

 in getting her again into the water, which 

 being effected, they proceeded to Whygatt 

 Straits but have returned to this coun- 

 try, we are happy to add, without the 

 loss of a single life, and, at the time of 

 their arrival, only one individual had not 

 recovered from the effects of their unpa- 

 ralleled fatigue. The failure of the expe- 

 dition is to be regretted rather as a disap- 

 pointment to the hopes of the individuals 

 engaged, than from any other cause : the 

 question it involves is one of mere specu- 

 lative curiosity. In a philosophical point 

 of view, as well as in a mercantile one, no 

 possible benefit can result from its solu- 

 tion j and, while we admire the courage 

 and ability displayed on the occasion, we 

 lament that they were not directed to some 

 more useful object. 



Locusts' JE//0S. The Pacha of Acre 

 has offered a reward for whatever quan- 

 tity of locusts' eggs, which are deposited 

 in the earth, may be brought him, after the 

 rate of sixteen piastres for each measure. 

 A letter from Acre states that more than 

 forty garavas, each containing seventy- 

 two measures, had already been brought 

 in amounting in weight to about 40,000 

 pounds English, and the value of the re- 

 ward will exceed 46,000 piastres. 



Artificial Leeches. A French surgeon 

 has invented a mechanical instrument to 

 serve as a substitute for leeches. The ad- 

 vantage consists in withdrawing only the 

 precise quantity of blood that may be re- 

 quired, and in occasioning no inflamma- 

 tion, which frequently results from the 

 use of the beneficial, but disgusting rep- 

 tile, the natural leech. It is considered 

 that, in every climate, and under all cir- 

 cumstances, this small machine will be 

 equally efficacious. 



Tenacity of Screws. We inserted some 

 time since, from the Philosophical Maga- 

 zine, the result of Mr. Sevan's experi- 

 ments on the adhesion of nails : the follow- 

 ing are the results of his experiments on 

 the force necessary to draw screws of 

 iron, commonly called wood screws, out of 

 given depths of wood. The screws were 

 about 2 inches in length, 0-22 diameter at 

 the exterior of the threads, 0*15 diameter 

 at the bottom, the depth of the worm or 

 thread being 0-035, and the number of 

 threads in an inch, 12. They were passed 

 through pieces of wood exactly half an 

 inch in thickness, and drawn out by the 

 weights specified in the following table : 

 Dry beech, 460 Ibs. ; ditto ditto, 790 j 

 dry round ash, 790 ; dry oak, 760 5 dry 

 mahogany, 770 j dry elm, 655 ; dry syca- 

 more, 830. The weights were extracted 



