loi REAR-ADMIRAL F. W. BEECHEY'S ADDRESS. []\rAY 26, 1856. 



unknown. They have acquired for ns a vast addition to onr store of 

 knowledge — in magnetism, so important an element in the safe con- 

 duct of our ships; in meteorology ; in geograph}^, natural and physical; 

 and which has led to the prosecution of like discoveries in the regions 

 of the Antarctic Pole. They have shown us what the human frame 

 is capable of undergoing and of accomplishing under great severity 

 of climate and privation. They have opened out various sources of 

 curious inquiry as to the existence at some remote period of tropical 

 plants and tropical animals in those now icy regions, and of other 

 matters interesting and useful to man. They have, in short, ex- 

 punged the blot of obscurity which would otherwise have hung over 

 and disfigured the page of the history of this enlightened age ; and, 

 if we except the lamentable fate which befel the expedition under 

 Sir John Franklin, we shall find that they have been attended with 

 as little if not less average loss of life than that of the ordinary course 

 of mankind. And if any one should be disposed to weigh their ad- 

 vantages in the scale of pecuniary profit, they will find that there also 

 they have yielded fruit, if not to us, at least to a sister nation in whose 

 welfare we are greatly interested, and whose generous sympathy in 

 the fate of our countrj^men endears her to us, and would render it 

 impossible that we should begrudge her this portion of the advan- 

 tage of our labours. I need hardly remind you of the Eeport from 

 the Secretaiy of the United States Navy to the Senate, to the effect 

 that in consequence of information derived from one of our Arctic 

 expeditions to Behring Strait, a trade had spmng up in America by 

 the capture of whales to the north of that Strait, of more value 

 to the States, than all their commerce with what is called the East ! 

 and that in two years, there had been added to the national wealth 

 of America, from^this source alone, more than eight millions of 

 dollars. 



Africa. 



I would next direct your attention to a region widely different in 

 its physical character to the last, but one in which we have alike 

 pushed our discoveries, with slow and occasionally painful progress, 

 it is true, but upon the whole with steady success— the region of 

 Africa. It is from this country I have to congratulate the Society 

 on the safe return of that distinguished traveller Dr. Earth, the suc- 

 cessful explorer of a large portion of Central Africa, and of the 

 filmed city of Timbuctii. An account of this expedition is now pre- 

 paring by Dr. Barth for publication, in five volumes, with maps; 



