506 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 



deep concave of the sky. " There is something," observes the authoress of the spirited 

 Letters from the Baltic, " very exhilarating in this breathless, still, bright cold with 

 a clean white expanse, a spotless world, before you every tree fringed every stream 

 stopped freedom to range over every summer impediment ; while the crystal snow, 

 lighting up into a delicate pink, or pearly hue, or glittering with the brightest prismatic 

 colours beneath the clear, low sun, and assuming a beautiful lilac or blue where our long 

 shadows intercept his rays, can no longer be stigmatised as a dead lifeless white." The 

 thermometer is frequently several degrees below zero. The severity of the cold appears 

 in icicles pendant from the eye-lashes of the Russian boor, and the conversion of his 

 beard into a lump of ice from the congelation of the vapour of his breath. The most 

 singular feature of this zone is the rapidity with which the change from winter to 

 summer transpires, observable in Canada as well as in northern Europe. The spring is 

 almost obliterated as a season. The snow melts, the hard-frozen ground is unlocked, 

 and the rivers are unsealed with astonishing quickness ; and a few days will suffice for 

 the transition of the trees from wintry nakedness to the sprouting out of their full com 

 plement of leaves. 



Frozen Regions. This zone extends from the northern boundary of the oak to the 

 pole, and is of much narrower dimensions in Europe than in America and Asia. . The 

 birch, the hardiest of trees, generally ceases to grow about latitude 70 in Europe, where 

 man is compelled to give up the cultivation of grain. Shrubs and bushes linger on 

 farther north ; grasses and lichens then are only to be met with ; and eternal snows and 

 ice succeed. In regions north of 59 in Asia, 71 in Europe, and 54 in America, the 

 mean annual temperature is below the freezing point. In winter brandy and mercury 

 freeze. Around Hudson's Bay and in North Siberia, lakes and standing waters of no 

 great depth are frozen to the bottom ; the inhabitants remain crowded together in 

 small huts ; and if the cold air suddenly enters a habitation, the vapours fall in a shower 

 of snow. Notwithstanding the efforts of our enterprising countrymen, the central region 

 of this zone, the geographical pole of the world, has not been reached, and consequently 

 the mean temperature is yet a matter of surmise. From the different indications of tem 

 perature in high northern latitudes in the Old and New World, it has been inferred that 

 the point of greatest cold is not coincident with the pole, but that the lowest temperature 

 is found at two points situated at about 80 of latitude, and 95 east longitude, and 100 

 west. Captain Parry, who wintered at Melville Island, often observed the thermometer 

 in the ship at 50, and at a distance from the ship at 55 below zero, perhaps the lowest 

 temperature, upon which entire dependence may be placed, that has been remarked. He 

 wintered on the south coast of the island in about latitude 74, and obtained the following 

 results of observation : 



The greatest heat at Melville Island, was + 60 Fahr. on the 17th of July. 



The greatest cold at ditto, 50 on the 15th of February. 



Mean temp, of warmest month, July, +42 '41 



of coldest month, February, 32*19 



of Winter. Dec., Jan., Feb., 28-02 



of Spring. March, April, May, 3 '27 



of Summer. June, July, Aug., +37 '11 



of Autumn. Sept., Oct., Nov., 0-51 



The mean temperature for 12 months + l'S3 



These results indicate a very extraordinary degree of cold, far surpassing what had ever 

 been supposed to exist in the imagination of the poets, or what the calculations of scien< 

 formerly assigned to the pole itself, where the hoary desolations of the arctic regions 

 were conceived to be concentrated. According to a table given by Leslie, the mean 



