20 Rev. W. Scoresby'g Remarks on the Probability 



He was succeeded at the Institute by M. Pinel, aqd at the 

 Museum of Natural History by M. Haiiy. I have had the ho- 

 nour of being chosen in his place in the College of France. 



Remarks on the Probability of reaching the North Pole : being 

 an examination of the recent Expedition under Captain 

 Parry ^ in order to the inquiry^ How Jar that experiment 

 affects the Practicability of the Eriterprize ? By the Rev. 

 William Scoresby, F. R. S. Lond. & Edin., M.W.S., Cor- 

 respondent of the Institute of France, &c. &c. Communica- 

 ted by the Author *. 



-T ROM the circumstance of the original proposal of the project 

 for reaching the Pole, by a journey over the ice, having been 

 first made to the Wernerian Society -|-, and received by that 

 Society, apparently, with favourable consideration, I venture to 

 renew the subject, after a lapse of thirteen years, in the hope, 

 notwithstanding the recent failure of Captain Parry in this same 

 adventure, of still justifying the proposition, upon the very plan 

 originally suggested, and of proving to the Society, that the 

 probability of success, if at all diminished, is by no means over- 

 turned. 



Hitherto I have studiously forborne to make remarks on the 

 various expeditions of late years employed in Arctic explorations, 

 for reasons not necessary to be named ; but any longer to re- 

 main silent, after the recent result^ would indicate, either that 

 the severe censure of a writer in the Quarterly Review was not 

 undeserved j, or, at least, that the late trial was a decisive ex- 



• Read before th? Wernerian Sciciety, June 1828. 



t Society's Memoirs, vol. ii. pp. 328-336. Read 11th March 1815. 



X The passage to which I refer, occurs in a note, under an article headed 

 " Burney — Behring's Strait, and the Polar Basin." It is as follows, " Cap- 

 tain Scoresby might well anticipate, that his idle and thoughtless project of 

 travelling over the ice of the sea to the North Pole, may be deemed ' the 

 frenzied speculation of a disordered fancy.' We regret that a young man, of 

 some talent, should have been betrayed, by a desire to make the vulgar stare, 

 into such an inconsistency; but it has served Malte Brun for an argument, 

 such as it is, against the existence of the Polar Basin, One would have 

 thought, that a person of his reading and sagacity might have seen the absur- 

 dity of such an idea ; and that, even supposing the Polar Sea to be frozen, it 



