1869.] Notices of Scientific Worlis. 399 



wliicli the God of Nature has estabhshed his everlasting laws, by 

 which the balance of existence is unerringly maintained. It is not 

 possible, even if it were desirable, to follow our author through his 

 several chapiters — each of them interesting. All the lands which are 

 spread out around the North Polar Ocean are described from the 

 best authorities, and described in such a way that the reader believes 

 them, as he reads, to be the result of Dr. Hartwig's personal obser- 

 vation. The plants and animals of the earth and seas are all 

 graphically described ; and the peculiar phenomena which attend their 

 existence, under the extreme conditions of a polar winter and an 

 arctic summer, are most fully and faithfully examined. 



Living as we do in the temperate regions of the earth — com- 

 plaining bitterly if our winter temperature falls much below the 

 freezing point of water — we are astonished to learn from the narra- 

 tives of the voyages of Belcher and of Kane, that their ships' crews 

 endured the temperature of nearly 100 degrees below that point, — 

 when chloric ether became solid, and strong chloroform exhibited 

 a granular pelhcle on its surface. Kane tells us, as examj^les of the 

 readiness with which man adapts himself to the conditions of 

 climate, that "George Kiley, with a vigorous constitution, estab- 

 lished habits of free exposure, and active cheerful temperament, has 

 so inured himself to the cold, that he sleeps on our sledge-journeys 

 without a blanket or any other covering than his walking-suit, 

 while the outside temperature is —30°." 



One of the secrets of healthful existence under such conditions 

 is to be sought in the food taken into the stomach to maintain the 

 internal temperature. Within the tropics where the solar heat 

 excites the animal machine to the utmost, but small internal force 

 is requu'ed, and there fruits and succulent vegetables are all that 

 are necessary to maintain life. We advance to the temjDerate 

 regions of this Earth, and then we find that man becomes a devourer 

 of animal food, this diet becoming, of necessity, more and more 

 carbonaceous as his dwelhng-place is situated nearer to the poles. 

 Withm the arctic circle we find men feeding on fats, and the 

 miserable Samojede is found eating pounds of blubber at a meal, and 

 di'inking quarts of seal oil. 



Notwithstanding much that has lately been written asserting — 

 at the same time as the materialistic philosophy is decried — that 

 brute matter lives by virtue of mere motion, no one can study the 

 relations of animals and plants to powers, forces, energies (call 

 them what you will) wliich are external to themselves, without 

 becoming convinced that light and heat and electricity are agents 

 ever active in maintaining Life. Whether we examine life in the 

 tropics or at the poles, we find provisions carefully, beautifully 

 designed, to equahze the power acting within the living organism, 

 with the force which is active from without upon it. Throughout 



