TRANSACTIONS OF THB SECTIONS. 96 



is prevalently found near Spitzbergen in spring and summer, in a much higher 

 latitude —in 79° or even beyond 80° N. This sea is often closed in, in the spring 

 of the year by a barrier of ice of 100 to 150 miles in width to the southward. On 

 passing the barrier for the first time, and then saiUng northward for two or three 

 degrees of latitude without interruption, the navigator might naturally infer a con- 

 tinuance of the open sea, not improbably to the very Pole. But experience would 

 soon teach him that the promising navigation was but limited; and certainly, betore 

 he reached the latitude of 81°, or thereabout, he would be stopped by impenetrable 

 and apparently interminable ices. , . ^ , , . , ^v .. 4.u 



The reasonable induction from what Capt. Inglefield witnessed was, that the ap- 

 parently open sea north of Smith's Sound was but another expansion of Baffin s Bay 

 after the manner of that succeeding to Davis's Strait, and that the open water was 

 due to the same circumstance,— the proximity of land, as Capt. Inglefield actually 

 observed, on both sides. Had the opening seen been the margin of an open Polar 

 ocean as it was assumed, the gale which drove the Isabella out of the Sound, south- 

 ward, should have raised waves of 20 to 30 feet in height, of which, it is believed, 

 there was no semblance. , . ^ . „, , j ., 



6 As to the profusion of animal life met with m Queen s Channel, and other open 

 waters amid the arctic lands, considered as a proof of a melioration of climate in 

 proceeding northward.— This popular inference, it may be satisfactorily shown, is 

 utterly inconclusive. For if the clear openings amid the northern ices just referred 

 to are demonstrably referable to the proximity of land, then the apparent mildness 

 of climate must naturally be explained, not by the assumption of an increase of 

 warmth with an increase of latitude, but to the form and contiguity of land. If this 

 were not so, then the profusion of animal life should increase, or at all events con- 

 tinue, in advancing in the highest attainable latitudes, whether land was there or 

 not. 'But the fact is not so. When, in summer, the coasts of Greenland and Spitz- 

 bergen for example, are swarming with aquatic birds and other creatures, let a ship 

 proceed to the highest attainable latitude north-westward of Hackluyt's Headland, 

 Spitzbergen, and ice will be found in the 80th or 81st parallel, with a greatly dimi- 

 nished quantity of birds and other animals ; and let the navigator push his ship as far 

 as possible into the northern ice, and he will soon, probably, find himself fast beset, 

 and with few living creatures— possibly almost none— to cheer his solitude. This 

 is a fact which, more than once, has been realized by personal experience,— a fact 

 conclusive in the way of proof that the profusion of animal life rae'c with in the ad- 

 ventures of our arctic voyagers, was not due to improvement of climate by reason 

 of advance towards the Pole ; for in the greatest advances northward which have 

 ever been made far away from land, animal life becomes less and less profuse, until, 

 in extreme cases, it almost disappears. So dependent, indeed, is the warmth of the 

 arctic summer generally on the proximity of land, that when, in the bays of Spitz- 

 bergen, or the inlets, such as Scoresbv's Sound, of Greenland, the weather may be- 

 come absolutely hot, characterized by the appearance of living moths, and even 

 mosquitoes, the temperature a few leagues out from the land will rarely be found 

 higher than, perhaps, 45°. , ■, • .. 



The assumed increase of animal life northward, so strongly urged in a recent 

 annual report of the Geographical Society, and otherwise, as a proof of a mild cli- 

 mate near the Pole, cannot be sustained,' therefore, as a general fact. It is not the 

 fact in regard to the highest latitudes that may be reached, nor is it the fact as to 

 the region about Wellington Channel ; for no instance appears ever to have been met 

 with there, in the higher latitudes reached in that region, at all comparable to the 

 wonderful extent of animal life which he (Dr. Scoresby) had shown in his publi- 

 cation on the ' Franklin Expedition,' pp. 68, 69, to have been met with in Regent s 

 Inlet, three or four degrees further south. Hence this argument also necessarily 

 falls with the failure of the assumed fact. 



7. As to the large quantify of the Greenland ices annually drifted away to the south- 

 ward, and dissolved,— Si fact from which it is argued that an open sea should be left 

 behind near the Pole.— But this inference depends on the assumptions, for which 

 there is no foundation, of these being ices coming from the Pole, and that the ices 

 annually produced around the Pole are cleared away year by year. On the contrary, 

 the more probable inference is, that these ices are merely the excess of the winter 

 production, by the severe frost of the north, carried ofiF, under the wise and gracious 

 oeconomy ordained by the Creator, in order to prevent that vast accumulation of icea 



