THE PROBLEM OF PERMANENT ARCTIC LIFE 2 1 9 



By the beginning of February, a month before the 

 reappearance of the sun, we were able to take walks 

 of considerable extent, and by the middle of that 

 month we were carrying our guns in pursuit of game/ 

 In addition, moonlight and starlight were brilliant, 

 and enabled them to cross the country almost through- 

 out the winter. This account somewhat dispels the 

 thickness of that Cimmerian darkness in which 

 tradition wraps the Polar night. But at best it is 

 bad enough. Men, even Arctic voyagers, feel its 

 gloom intolerable, though cheered by artificial light. 

 Strange to say, the animals do not, so far as we can 

 tell. Their eyes are not modified by the prevailing 

 darkness, either in the direction of greater power, or 

 by degeneration, through which the shallow water 

 forms which have invaded the deep seas have become 

 blind. At the same time, Mr Battye has noted, and 

 satisfied himself by repeated experiments, that the 

 faculty of sight is inferior in the Arctic fox and Arctic 

 hare to that of the common fox and common hare 

 of Britain. The 'nervous depression* with which 

 darkness affects men is quite absent in the case of 

 animals in the Arctic nights. Their vital activity is 

 unaffected by the absence of sunlight which, though 

 protracted for so great a time, seems no more irksome 

 than it does to those animals which have by choice 

 become nocturnal in their habits in temperate lands. 



