218 ANIMALS AT WORK AND PL A Y 



land creatures, all of whom might, if they chose, 

 migrate reindeer, musk-sheep, polar-bears, blue foxes, 

 and lemmings prefer to stay, and abide for six months 

 in this circumpolar ' city of dreadful night/ The 

 nature of this polar night, of the cold it brings and 

 its effect on animals, may be gathered from Colonel 

 Feilden's notes made during the winter passed by 

 H.M.S. ' Alert' on Grinnell Land in 1875-76, at a 

 point nearer the actual Pole than has been reached 

 before or since. The sun sank on October I2th, 

 and did not reappear till March 2d a night of only 

 twenty-nine days less than its calculated disappearance 

 at the actual Pole. Yet it is certain that this pro- 

 tracted night was never dark in the sense that it 

 is dark inside the galleries of a coal-pit. The Arctic 

 animals, unlike the deep-sea creatures, need to develop 

 no light-organs to illuminate their path, though they 

 live only in ' darkness visible/ ' On November 3Oth,' 

 writes Colonel Feilden, c with a perfectly clear sky, 

 from a distance of half-a-mile in a southerly direction, 

 the ship was visible from eleven A.M to one P.M. 

 At noon, just topping the eastern hills, was a faintly- 

 tinted, pearly-green sky, through which stars of the 

 first magnitude had a difficulty in shining. On 

 January 24th, the twilight at noon had increased 

 sufficiently to enable us to distinguish a comrade 

 at a distance of one hundred and twenty yards. 



