702 



NATURE 



[June 3, 1922 



domestic products involved. If, however, the quota- 

 tions in April 1922 are compared with those in 

 September 1921 for the same fifty typical materials 

 it is found that, of the forty-six listed in the earlier 

 catalogue, the price of twenty-four is unchanged, the 

 price of twenty is reduced, whilst in two cases only 

 has it been increased. 



The question of quality obviously does not admit of 

 discussion on a quantitative basis, but it will be recalled 

 that even the long-established German firms were 

 obliged to acknowledge sporadic blunders, and only the 

 chemist who himself has never failed in preparing an 

 organic material of the highest grade is entitled to 

 withhold mercy, not to mention justice, from those 

 manufacturers who have endeavoured to meet domestic 

 requirements by covering a wide range as rapidly as 

 possible. Surveyed generally, the British quaHty 

 reaches a high standard. 



Moreover, the range now offered is commendable. 

 The organic chemist, particularly in the opening phases 

 of an investigation, sometimes requires relatively 

 obscure compounds in quantities of a few grams at a 

 time, and the convenience of a British price-list com- 

 prising 2500 individual substances for use in research 

 or analysis approaches, within a praiseworthy distance, 

 the advantages offered by Kahlbaum and Schuchardt. 

 There is no finality to such a list, which can receive 

 additions when requirements are made known. Even 

 the research chemist who has been mesmerised by the 

 multitude and cheapness of German products, and by 

 pre-war facilities for obtaining them must, on reflection, 

 realise the burden which would be placed on a new 

 industry by stocking every conceivable material, a large 

 proportion of which would not be wanted for years to 

 come. Finally, it should be represented that if the spell 

 of German chemical superiority is ever to be broken, one 

 factor in its dispersal is the demonstration, to successive 

 relays of native students, that it is possible to produce 

 in this country chemical materials of good quality and 

 at reasonable prices. Moderate self-denial and exercise 

 of fair-play during the next few years appear to be the 

 principal equipment required in achieving this most 

 desirable end. M. 0. F. 



Northernmost Greenland. 



Greenland, by the Polar Sea : The Story of the Thule 

 Expedition from Melville Bay to Cape Morris J esup. 

 By Knud Rasmussen. Translated from the Danish 

 by A. and R. Kenney. Pp. xxiv-F327 + pls. and 

 maps. (London : W. Heinemann, 1921.) 365. net. 



MR. KNUD RASMUSSEN occupies a unique 

 place amongst polar explorers because, as the 

 son of a Danish pastor in Greenland, he spent the first 

 NO. 2744, VOL. 109] 



fourteen years of his life amongst the Eskimo, knowing 

 their language like his own and entering into their 

 modes of life as to the manner born. There was thus 

 nothing strange or repulsive to him in the diet, the 

 clothing, or the housing of the Eskimo, and after his 

 education at the University of Copenhagen, he turned 

 to the exploration of Greenland and the study of its 

 people as naturally as a seal takes to the water. 



In 1903-4 Mr. Rasmussen sojourned as a member 

 of the Danish Literary Expedition among the " Arctic 

 Highlanders," first discovered by Sir John Ross in 

 i8i8 and made familiar to English readers by Peary's 

 repeated winterings. In 1910 Rasmussen established 

 a station named Thule on the shore of Wolstenholme 

 Sound, nearly in 77° N., and from this centre he made 

 his " First Thule Expedition " in 1912-13 ; he crossed 

 the inland-ice to the north-east, and proved that Peary 

 was in error when he supposed that his Independence 

 Bay was on a channel which cut off northernmost 

 Greenland as an island. Rasmussen's intention had 

 been to return to Thule along the west coast of Green- 

 land from its most northerly point, but circumstances 

 compelled him to go back by the way he came. An 

 attempt to repeat the journey in 1914 failed, and the 

 purpose of the book now under review is to describe 

 the journey northward along the west coast which 

 was carried out in 191 7. The motive of the expedition 

 was ethnographical — the discovery of the route by 

 which the great Eskimo migration entered Greenland, 

 and it was only preliminary to a greater journey, not 

 yet completed, along the north coast of America. 



The range of the journey is stated on the title-page 

 as " from Melville Bay to Cape Morris Jesup," but was 

 really less, as De Long Fjord was its termination. None 

 of the ground traversed on the outward journey was new 

 in the sense of first discovery, for the whole coast had 

 been charted from the sea by expeditions which had 

 forced their way through Smith Sound and the channels 

 to the polar ocean, while sledge parties from Nares' 

 expedition onwards had skirted much of the coast. 



The interest of Rasmussen's journey hes in its 

 methods as much as in its results. He was accom- 

 panied by two Scandinavian men of science— Dr. Koch, 

 a Danish geologist, and Dr. Wulff, a Swedish botanist. 

 There were also four Eskimos, and when the expedition 

 started from Thule on April 6, 1917, it had 6 sledges 

 and 185 dogs. The expedition carried a minimum of 

 European stores and equipment so as to travel quickly, 

 and beyond luxuries such as cocoa, tea, sugar, prepared 

 oats, biscuits, and pemmican, all food was to be ob- 

 tained by hunting. 



The first day's journey was 94 kilometres, accom- 

 plished in ten hours, a magnificent performance on 

 the sea-ice, which was never equalled afterwards ; as 



