233 



says that during the thirty years he had been in that business he 

 had found that in Greenland there was one fine summer in ten 

 years, a fact which had, moreover, been long recognised by the 

 Greenlanders. Now his theory was that whenever there was a 

 hot summer in Greenland, there was of necessity a wet one here, 

 and fo^ tl;^s reason : the heat in Greenland acted on the ice- 

 fields ^Uji"' set free a large number of bergs, which in their way 

 southwards became gradually melted, a large portion of their 

 moisture ascending in the form of vapour," which being condensed, 

 and " driven by the north-west winds, deluges us ■vnth rain." 



This and the previous statement together would lead us to 

 infer that both winter and summer in high Polar latitudes had 

 been unusually warm this last year, and if so, they must have in 

 part been instrumental in bringing about our protracted period of 

 wet and cold. 



We may hope to learn more about the conditions and move- 

 ments of the Polar ice, as affected by the severity or mildness of 

 the winter in those high latitudes in difierent years, if the scheme 

 proposed " for establishing stations within the Arctic circle at 

 which meteorological phenomena may be observed for twelve 

 months" is found capable of being carried into effect.* 



Manifestly, however, the dispersion of the great fields of ice in 

 high latitudes must have some connection with the course of the 

 v> inds ; the long prevalence of particular winds having the eflFect 

 of keeping the fields compact, or breaking them up and causing 

 them to drift southwards, as the case may be, — irrespective of the 

 ice itself being more accumulated some years than others. Here 

 again we may before long look for some light from the co-operation 

 of those now engaged in publishing the " International Weather 

 Charts " of the Northern Hemisphere based on simultaneous 

 observations. Originating in the United States, this plan of 

 charting has become widely extended, and been taken up by the 



• See Athenceum, Sept. 13, 1879, p. 343. 



