90 Observations wi tlie Arctic Sea and Ice, and 



\ On the approach of spring the seaward limits of this mighty 

 frozen plain are broken up, and the fragments are gradually 

 dissolved, as they are carried by the currents down the Atlantic. 

 Thousands of square leagues disappear in the course of a few 

 weeks, a free course is opened to the fishermen, even to the 

 northern shores of Spitzbergen ; and, as the season advances, 

 the same process evidently goes on to a certain extent, in the un- 

 explored North Eastern Seas. Their fields, too, are destroyed, 

 and the ruins, borne past Nova Zembla, disappear in their drift 

 to the southward. 



Thus, the reign of winter in these forlorn regions is relaxed 

 by the returning sun, and the slumbering deep roused ^by the 

 storm, rends in fragments the frozen loads, dashes mass on mass, 

 and hurls the whole to ruin. On the shores of Spitzbergen a 

 thawing temperature prevails during the summer, and the flow- 

 erets on the warm bank, disburdened of its snowy cover, flourish 

 for a time, whilst the inland country, buried under the snow of 

 ages, is scarcely visited by a thawing beam. 



It is by reasoning on the causes of this mighty havoc, and 

 contemplating the effects produced by them, that conjectures 

 on the state of the untraversed seas, north and east from Spitz- 

 bergen, have been conceived. 



The chief agents in destroying the ice seem to be, the Sun's 

 rays, the tempest, the currents, attrition, and the wind-Upper. 



Action of the Sun^s Rays. — The sun^s rays exert a double 

 influence ; 1,?^, By expansion : and, 9^dly, By solution. 



The effects of expansion are of the first magnitude. But for 

 this, the ice of the north, having acquired its usual thickness, 

 might bid defiance to the efforts of every other agent, and re- 

 main almost immoveably the same. The storm may break up 

 the detached fields ; attrition may comminute their fragments, 

 the wind-lipper may wash them out of existence ; or the currents 

 may carry them into other seas ; but until the frozen continent 

 is broken up, and reduced to fields,- all these can make but little 

 impression. 



Authors have published accounts of the various forms which 

 the ice of Greenland assumes, and have theorized on their mode 

 of formation ; but concerning the detachment of fields, they have 

 ^ been silent, so far as I know. This very important process 



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