28 Rev. W. Scoresby'*s RemarJis on the ProhaUUtij 



always appeared to me so formidable, as to require, if possible, 

 to be avoided. To effect this, I suggested, in the original plan, 

 that " it ivould he necessary to set out by the close of the month 

 of April or beginning of May ; or at least some time before the 

 severity of the frost should be too greatly relaxed *.'" 



A very brief mention of the well-known changes which take 

 place in the polar ices on the approach of summer, will suffice 

 to shew the importance of this suggestion. During the conti-^ 

 nuance of the frost below 28J°Fahr. (the freezing point of sea-wa- 

 ter), the small interstices among drift ice, and the greater spaces 

 among fields, are generally filled up by " bay-ice.'" So that, in 

 the midst of a body of drift ice, where no original mass should 

 exceed 100 yards in diameter, or indeed any smaller maximum, 

 the whole body, in the spring of the year, is generally cemented 

 into a continuous field ; and this, in situations sheltered from 

 the action of the sea, often partakes so much of the nature of 

 a field, that there is no difficulty in walking over such ice for 

 many leagues together, without ever requiring the aid of a boat. 

 Hence, in the months of April and part of May (probably the 

 whole of May in latitudes to the northward of Spitzbergen), the 

 entire body of the Spitzbergen and Greenland ices greatly par- 

 takes of the nature of continuous fields. Sometimes, indeed, 

 the field ice gets separated to the westward of Spitzbergen be- 

 fore that time ; but this is unfrequent. It is at that time, 

 therefore, when the drift-ice is thus cemented into field-like con- 

 tinuity, and when the field-ice is often found in uninterrupted 

 connection, from the filling up of the interstices with bay-ice, 

 that the Arctic ices are unquestionably in a better state for the 

 progress of travellers, than at any other season at which the 

 80th degree of latitude could be reached without wintering. 

 And at this season, when the snow is yet undissolved, and occa- 

 sicmally hard upon the surface, — when there is no water what- 

 ever upon the ice, no rain to impede or incommode the adven- 



• I ought perhaps to apologise to the Society for this and some other re- 

 ferences to my own publications ; but I am under the necessity of doing so, 

 to avoid the imputation of first deriving information from Captain Parry's 

 experiment, and then using that information as an argument for a new plan, 

 suggested by the causes of the recent failure. My object in these references 

 is to prove that I am not taking up new views ; but justifying the original 

 plan. 



