138 The Ottawa Naturalist. [November 



Royal Geographical Society in London (on Feb. 5th, 1897), that 

 "nothing is more remarkable than ihe scientific element in 

 Nansen's expedition." 



How far Dr. Nansen succeeded we have now some means of 

 judging in the handsome volume of scientific memoirs, published 

 in London a few months ago. 



When Dr. Nansen was in Ottawa, three years ago, I ventured 

 to ask him what his results were likely to be, and when the scien- 

 tific world might expect their publication. He said that he had 

 accumulated in his trip such a mass of observations, physical, 

 meteorological, geological, as well as biological, that some years 

 would of necessity elapse before they could be fully worked up into 

 treatises. "The specimens of Crustacea alone," he informed me, 

 knowing my special interest in zoology, "will take my brother-in- 

 law, Dr. Sars, about three years to completely study." That was 

 in 1897, and like so many of Dr. Nansen's anticipations, it has 

 been literally fulfilled, for of the five splendid scientific memoirs 

 contained in the quarto volume just issued by Nansen, the longest, 

 and in some respects most striking, is that upon the Crustacea by 

 Professor G. O. Sars, the brilliant Norse zoologist. It contains 

 some very unexpected information. Thus we learn that floating 

 surface animals of minute size, are abundant even in the most 

 northerly polar waters, though almost perpetually covered by a 

 layer office. Mr. Tyrrell has told us that there are lakes in the 

 northern barren grounds sheeted over with thick ice at midsum- 

 mer, yet abounding in whitefish ; but the plenitude of minute 

 crustaceans in the icy surface waters of the Arctic is even more 

 surprising. Most of them are Copepods, an order of almost 

 microscopic crustaceans, of which the common freshwater mite, 

 Cyclops^ is a familiar example. Most of the sub-class Entoniostraca, 

 to which the Copepods belong, are small crustaceans with a thin 

 firm cuticle, never a thick shell like the lobster or crayfish, a 

 simple organization, and a variable number of segments or body 

 rings, and jointed legs. Like Cyclops they have usually a single 

 median eye at the front of the head. Copepods are frequently 

 colourless and translucent, though they may be orange red, and 

 one species which I observed off the west coast of Ireland, was 

 appropriately enough of a brilliant green colour. They form the 



