Dr Richardson on (he Frozen Soil of North America. Ill 



ing the necessary observations as fully as the means available 

 at their several posts would allow. I wrote, accordingly, to 

 the Governor, now Sir John H. Pelly, Bart., stating fully the 

 object in view, and the mode of making the observations ; and 

 that gentleman and the other members of the Committee of 

 the Company, with the zeal for the advancement of science for 

 which they have long been distinguished, early in 1835 trans- 

 mitted copies of my letter to the several chief factors in charge 

 of districts in the fur countries, with instructions for them to 

 comply with the directions therein expressed. 



Pits were dug at upwards of fourteen different posts in the 

 autumn and winter following, but the reports of the results 

 did not reach me until the beginning of the present month 

 (November 1840). In the mean time, the inquiry had been 

 rendered more interesting to scientific men in England by 

 Professor Baer's papers on " The Ground Ice or Frozen Soil 

 of Siberia," published in the Journal of the Geographical 

 Society for 1838 ;* and not being aware that my former let- 

 ter had been acted upon, I again drew up a paper having 

 similar objects in view, which was printed in the Geographical 

 Journal for 1839, together with " Some notes on the best 

 points in British North America for making observations on 

 the Temperature of the Air." Copies of both were trans- 

 mitted that same season to Hudson's Bay, together with 

 twenty-six thermometers, carefully constructed by Newman. 

 These thermometers were ordered by the council of the Royal 

 Geographical Society, but the governor and committee of the 

 Hudson's Bay Company liberally determined to defray the 

 expense themselves. Unfortunately the greater part of the 

 thermometers were destroyed by accident in the overland jour- 

 ney, and some of the remaining ones were lost in the winter by 

 their ivory scales curving and breaking the tubes ; a mischance 

 which has not happened to thermometers with metal scales in 

 that country. By these accidents we have been deprived for a 

 time of a knowledge of the mean temperature of the atmo- 

 sphere in the northern zones of America, and consequently of 

 the means of calculating theoretically the depth of the frozen 

 soil in the different latitudes. 



* Soe also this Journal, vol. xxiv., p. 435, and vol. xxv., p. 417. — Edit. 



