THE KETURN OF DAYLIGHT. 289 



his nitrate of silver had any nitrate of silver about it, 

 his test must have been a good one ; and the extraor- 

 dinary, and even marvelous and miraculous, finding of 

 fresh ice (potable water) may be ascribed to the pres- 

 ence of fresh- water ice from the land, which presence 

 can only be accounted for by the equally miraculous 

 floe of melting glacier upon a salt ocean, remaining ac- 

 commodatingly unruffled until the superimposed fluid 

 had had time to freeze. 



Again Dr. Kane says that the floes " which had 

 formed in mid winter at temperatures below minus 30'' 

 were still fresh and pure, while the floes of slower 

 growth, or of the early and late portions of the season, 

 were distinctly saline. Indeed, ice which only two 

 months before I had eaten with pleasure, was now so 

 salt that the very snow which covered it was no longer 

 drinkable." In respect to this I can only say that we 

 have tried ice frozen at all temperatures, from zero to 

 minus 30°, and have never had the same satisfactory 

 result. And Dr. Walker, who was with McClintock in 

 the Fox, says (as further and more worthy authority 

 than my statement), " Yet in no case (and my observa- 

 tions extend from below the freezing point to minus 

 42°) could I obtain fresh water, the purest being of 

 specific gravity 1.005, and affording abundant evidence 

 of the presence of salts, especially chloride of sodium, 

 rendering it unfitted for culinary purposes, much less 

 for photographic use." And he further says : " Per- 

 haps the statement of Dr. Kane that sea -water ice, un- 

 der certain circumstances, is completely free from salt, 

 may be explained by the following facts and experi- 

 ments : After our winter preparations had been com- 

 menced, and the pool of fresh water (from melting 

 snow) had been frozen over, the men sent out to bring 



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