May 17, 1894J 



NA TURE 



59 



open water, and if oceanic ice intervenes, it would be 

 traversed as rapidly as possible, and a return made to the 

 farthest north point on solid land, where winter-qu.irters 

 could be established ; but should this be impracticable, 

 the retreat would be continued to the base, where the 

 second winter would be spent. In the spring of i8q6 

 the party would turn northward again, the chain of depots 

 accelerating their progress. In the summer of i8ij6the 

 ship will return with additional stores and men, and to 

 obtain news ; but it does not appear to be .Mr. Jackson's 

 intention to return, unless he is satisfied that his work 

 is final, until 1897. This expedition ought certainly to 

 extend our knowledge of the most northerly land known, 

 and if fortune favours it, the advances made may be 

 great. Its equipment is of the very best, and no e.\cuse 

 of bad material can be brought forward to explain 

 unsatisfactory results. 



The expedition for the exploration of Ellesmereland, 

 to which reference has several times been made in 

 Naturf;, planned by .Mr. Robert Stein, of the U.S. 

 Geological Survey, has been postponed; we hope only until 

 next season. Still eftbrts will be made this summer to clear 

 up the fate of the unfortunate young Swedish naturalists, 

 Bjbrling and Kalstennius, with their mate, Gilbert Dunn, 

 and cook, Herbert MacDonald, of whom the last news 

 received was that they intended to seek shelter with the 

 reported Eskimo of Ellesmere Land. .Mr. Elis Nilson 

 has been sent out by the Swedish Anthropological 

 and Geographical Societies, on the Dundee whaler 

 Eclipse, to visit the Carey Islands and Clarence Head, 

 if the ice permits, and search for any relics of the miss- 

 ing party, whose fate, after two years without supplies, 

 can scarcely be considered doubtful. Baron Norden- 

 skjold has interested himself particularly in the search, 

 and will probably arrange for other whalers to deviate 

 from their course in order to obtain information. 



Dr. F. A. Cook, the ethnologist on Peary's former ex- 

 pedition, has issued a prospectus of a pleasure trip which 

 he is to conduct up I3affin's Bay to Smith Sound, witJi 

 the opportunity of a slight change of route should any of 

 the passengers desire it. This would, if the state of the 

 ice permitted, render it possible to call at Clarence Head 

 and the Carey Islands, and make at least a hasty search 

 for the missing party ; but a pleasure trip scarcely lends 

 itself to serious Arctic exploration. 



Prophecy with regard to the results of geographical ex- 

 ploration is too uncertain to be indulged in by modern 

 critics, and in Arcticexploration particularly the conditions 

 are so difficult to predict that success may attend the most 

 inexperienced and worst equipped, while experience and 

 all the resources of wealth and science would struggle in 

 vain against adverse conditions. There are certain re- 

 markable features about the new expeditions which 

 distinguish them from most of the earlier efl'orts. 

 Each has been planned and is being carried out 

 by a man who is thoroughly in earnest, and whose repu- 

 tation rests on his success. This is widely different from 

 the case of a commander "ordered" to carry out the 

 plans ot others. Each expedition is small ; Nansen's, 

 which is the largest, comprises only thirteen men. Two 

 of those which have already faced the awful monotony 

 of the Arctic night, have appliances for dissipating the 

 darkness by the electric light, an advantage which can 

 hardly be over-estimated in its effect on the spirits of the 

 men. Provisions and equipments have been greatly im- 

 proved, even since the time of the Alert and Discovery 

 and of the Jduinctte. Most important of all, three of the 

 expeditions are free from the responsibility of a ship. 

 In all these ways the four serious attempts of this )ear 

 have elements of success never combined previously. 

 Their results will not be known for some time. News of 

 Mr. Peary will certainly be received this autumn by the 

 vessel to be sent up to Ingletield Gulf to bring him liome 

 if he considers his work satisfactorily finished. U is 



NO. I ?8r, VOL. 50] 



probable that Mr. Wellman also will return ; but unless 

 he should by some scarcely credible good fortune meet 

 the crew of the Frain at his farthest north, we cannot 

 hope to hear of .Xansen for another year at least ; and 

 Mr. Jackson's scheme provides for a possible absence on 

 his part for four years, though progress should be 

 reported before the end of next year. 



Hugh Robert Mill. 



THE CRINOIDEA OF GOTLAND^ 



'X'HIS is the first instalment of a memoir based on a 

 ■*■ revision of the specimens of crinoids in the Angelin 

 collection at Stockholm. It is published in English, and 

 is illustrated by Mr. G. Liljevall, who has produced 3S2 

 remarkably beautiful figures upon ten quarto plates. 

 Their accuracy may be relied on by those who know Mr. 

 Bather's own scrupulous carefulness as an artist. 



The author commences by pointing out the need for a 

 thorough re-examination of the Stockholm specimens, 

 the drawings in Angelin's " Iconographia Crinoideorum" 

 being so frequently misleading, and having been in many 

 cases produced by a union of several distinct individuals. 

 The older palajontologists certainly had not that reverence 

 for type-specimens which now very justly prevails among 

 curators ; they brought out, as they thought, the salient 

 points of their specimens, filled in a sort of fancy 

 groundwork of rock around the drawing, and left 

 students to search in vain in the collection for the 

 exact object that had thus been honoured above the 

 others. 



The classification of the Crinoidea undergoes consider- 

 able changes with each new descriptive paper, and Mr. 

 Bather's works are a healthy example of receptivity and 

 indifference to precedent. We read each in the light of 

 the glossary appended to it, ridding our minds as far as 

 possible of the technicalities that we have previously 

 learned. We must confess that such changes in nomen- 

 clature are based on observation and on additions to our 

 knowledge, and we need only quarrel with the termin- 

 ology when it is reduced to algebraic symbols. 



The abolition of the Fistulata and the Larviformia as 

 sub-orders of the Inadunata (p. 8), and the substitution — 

 quite temporarily— of divisions based on the presence or 

 absence of infrabasals, may be hailed as a simplification, 

 allowing more latitude in the association of the several 

 genera. But the value of such close and detailed work 

 as that of the present memoir will depend in no way 

 upon the stability of the classification utilised. Mr. 

 Bather fp. 19) can thus treat even the Inadunata as a 

 convenient portmanteau, soon to be worn out ; and spe- 

 cialists will turn with pleasure to the critical descriptions 

 of individual specimens in the collections. 



A fine example of how the collation of specimens, year 

 after year, will add profoundly to our knowledge of 

 ancient life upon the eaith, is to be found in the story of 

 Herpelocriiuis (pp. 36-45). The crown of this genus was 

 detected in certain Dudley specimens by Mr. Bather 

 himself, Salter's opinion being thus amply verified; and 

 the coiled stem, often supposed to be an arm, is now 

 shown to have had a permanent tendency 1 p. 45), by its 

 very structure, to bend round in one direction, while it 

 could probably be uncoiled "by the simple contraction 

 of the large musc'es on the outer part of the articular 

 surface." With a quaintness of expression now familiar 

 to us, our author proceeds : " It is very probable that the 

 animals usually broke off any rooted attachment they 

 may have formed, and that they clung to corals or other 

 submarine objects by their cirri.' It is further su^jgesled 

 that they could move from one spot to another. 



' "The Crinoide.i of Gotland." Pari i. The CrtnoiJen Infuiunttta, 

 By F. A. Bather, M.A., F.G.S. (Slockholoi : Kongl. Svenska Vci.-Akad, 

 Handl. Bt. 35. 1893.) 



