176 SCIENCE IN SHORT CHAPTERS. 



It is our exceptional meteorological position that has 

 generated the popular expression " as uncertain as the wind." 

 We are in the very centre of the region of meteorological 

 uncertainties, and cannot go far, either northward or 

 southward, without entering a zone of greater atmospheric 

 regularity, where the direction of the wind at a given season 

 may be predicted with more reliability than at home. The 

 atmospheric movements in the Arctic regions appear to be 

 remarkably regular and gen tie during the summer and winter 

 months, and irregular and boisterous in spring and autumn. 

 A warm upper current flows from the tropics towards the 

 Pole, and a cold lower one from the Arctic circle towards 

 the equator. Commander Cheyne, who has practical 

 experience of these Arctic expeditions, and has kept an 

 elaborate log of the wind, etc., which he has shown me, 

 believes that, by the aid of pilot balloons to indicate the 

 currents at various heights, and by availing himself of these 

 currents, he may reach the Pole and return to his ship, or 

 so near as to be able to reach it by traveling over the ice 

 in light sledges that will be carried for that purpose. In 

 making any estimate of the risk of Arctic aerostation, we 

 must banish from our minds the preconceptions induced by 

 our British experience of the uncertainties of the wind, and 

 only consider the atmospheric actualities of the Polar re- 

 gions, so far as we know them. 



Let us now consider the second danger, viz., that of being 

 blown out to sea and there remaining until the leakage of 

 gas has destroyed the ascending power of the balloon, or 

 till the stock of food is consumed. A glance at a map of 

 the world will show how much smaller is the danger to the 

 aeronaut who starts from the head of Baffin's Bay than that 

 which was incurred by those who started from Vuuxhall in 

 the Nassau balloon, or by Captain Eoher, who started from 

 Paris. Both of these had the whole breadth of the Atlantic 

 on the W. and S.W., and the North Sea and Arctic Ocean 

 N, and N.B. The Arctic balloon, starting from Smith's 

 Sound or thereabouts, with a wind from the South (and 

 without such a wind the start would not, of course, be made), 

 would, if the wind continued in the same direction, reach 

 the Pole in a few hours; in seven or eight hours at Roller's 



