28 WHITE. [Feb. 11, 1856. 



ocean, a fearful and magnificent spectacle," and that of Sir Edward 

 Parry, were adduced in corroboration. 



Reference was also made to the Gulf Stream, which, passing Great 

 Britain and Norway, enters the Polar Basin ; and, having made its entire 

 circuit, returns by Davis' Strait to the Atlantic Ocean ; and the evidence 

 through which its course could be ascertained, was gone into. 



The President : As a small volume from my pen has been quoted by 

 Mr. White in support of his opinions about a Polar basin, 1 cannot avoid 

 offering a few remarks upon the subject before us, lest I may be supposed to 

 assent to the speculative notion of there being a permanent fluid oasis amidst 

 the great frozen desert of the North. . And first as to the eflect of the sun's 

 rays at the Pole, it is not easy to attach any other meaning to Mr. White's 

 remarks about the sun's shining continually ^^ npon one point ^^ and ^Hn one 

 direct line^'' than that the motion of the earth at the Pole is not sensible, and 

 that the same surface is always presented to the sun. If such is the meaning 

 of the writer, his arguments have been founded upon false premises ; for in 

 no part of the globe is the sun's azimuthal motion more apparent than at 

 the Pole. 



Arguments in favour of a Polar basin have been founded upon the data of 

 Dove, which show that the point of maximum cold upon the globe does not 

 coincide with that of the maximum of latitude. But admitting this to be 

 true, i'f the cold at the Pole is sufficient to freeze the sea, and to keep it at 

 such a mean temperature that the summer influence has but a comparatively 

 trifling eflect upon the ice formed upon it, it is surely a suflicient contradiction 

 to such arguments ; audit has been shown by the same great authority, Dove, 

 that the mean annual temperature at the Pole is upwards of 30° below the 

 freezing point ; that the mean temperature of the coldest month is 58 6° below 

 the freezing point ; and that the mean temperature of the warmest month is 

 still more than a degree below the freezing point. Who can read these tem- 

 peratures and then turn to Parry's voyage, and, at a distance of 16° from the 

 Pole, contemplate the mean temperatures registered in the following months 

 by him, viz. — 



o 



July . . 10 below freezing point. 



Aug. ..0 



Sept. ..10 



Oct. ..36 



Nov. .. 52 „ 



Dec. .. 54 



— who, I say, can read these terrible mean temperatures of the several months, 

 both by Dove and by Parry, and believe that the sea remains navigable, ex- 

 cept perhaps in the very limited space between the broken floes of ice, and 

 that only for a very limited period ? 



Mr. White quotes Sir Edward Parry in favour of his theory of a Polar 

 Basin, and triumphantly remarks : " In Captain Parry's journey, at his 

 farthest point, there was nothing more to impede a vessel's course than was 

 met with near the margin." 



I really do not know what stronger proof can be required than this of 

 the Polar Sea being covered with an enormous mass of impenetrable ice. 

 Captain Parry, after travelling ^660 miles over this mass of ice, declares it 



