The Oologists' Record, September i, 1922. 67 



" passengers, at least during the season corresponding to that in 

 " which the tourist of to-day sails to Alaska or Norway or Spitz- 

 " bergen to see the midnight sun." 



******* 



" The first advantage of the Polar route is its shortness. The 



" most practical route (from England to Japan) of the recent past 



" has led from England by way of ocean steamers to Montreal, 



" the Canadian railways to Vancouver, and then by the northerly 



"steamer route along the Aleutian Islands to Japan. This route is 



" approximately 11,000 miles from Liverpool to Yokohama. But 



" the distance from a railway terminus at the north of Great Britain 



" to the north end of Japan proper, where railway travel could be 



" again resumed, is by air route only 4,960 miles, or about half the 



" present regular route between the two countries." 



******* 



" Econom}^ in h^'drogen is the second important advantage 

 " of the Polar route. . . Paint the bag silver or any colour 

 " you will, the amount of heat locally generated by the sun's rays 

 " striking the dirigible is great. The hydrogen expands, and there 

 "is no practical way as yet conceived which can avoid the loss of 

 "gas. 



" You can avoid a bursting of the bag only by allowing the gas 

 "to escape." This is" the chief factor which limits the length of 

 " balloon voyages. A certain amount of gas is lost each day and 

 " reciprocalh^ a certain amount of ballast has to be thrown out each 

 " night to prevent the balloon from settling to earth. 



" But the alternation of day and night, which seems a necessary 

 " evil to those habituated to southern latitudes, is not a factor in 

 " the Polar regions, whether in mid-winter, when it is always dark, 

 " or in mid-summer, when it is always light. We shall, for the 

 " present, consider only summer journeys." 



Mr. Stefansson then enlarges upon the third great advantage 

 of the route — the perpetual dajdight. So often in a mishap at 

 sea all efforts are rendered futile by the fact that all lights are 

 extinguished when the disaster happens. 



The fourth great advfintage lies in the presence of the enormous 

 ice-floes, seldom more than a few miles apart. A forced descent 

 to open water would be robbed of the greatest perils attending such 

 a thing in mid-Atlantic for " one effect of scattered floes is that 

 " even in a gale there are no heavy seas. Indeed, if the ice is 



