180 Things not generally Known. 



sea is nearly pure, containing but very minute traces of salts. 

 Falling as rain upon the land, it washes the soil, percolates 

 through the rocky layers, and becomes charged with saline 

 substances, which are borne seaward by the returning currents. 

 The ocean, therefore, is the great depository of every thing that 

 water can dissolve and carry down from the surface of the con- 

 tinents ; and as there is no channel for their escape, they con- 

 sequently accumulate ( Youmans 1 Chemistry). They would con- 

 stantly accumulate, as this very shrewd author remarks, were 

 it not for the shells and insects of the sea and other agents. 



SCENERY AND LIFE OF THE ARCTIC REGIONS. 



The late Dr. Scoresby, from personal observations made in 

 the course of twenty-one voyages to the Arctic Regions, thus 

 describes these striking characteristics : 



The coast scenes of Greenland are generally of an abrupt character, 

 the mountains frequently rising in triangular profile ; so much so, that 

 it is sometimes not possible to effect their ascent. One of the most 

 notable characteristics of the Arctic lands is the deception to which tra- 

 vellers are liable in regard to distances. The occasion of this is the 

 quantity of light reflected from the snow, contrasted with the dark co- 

 lour of the rocks. Several persons of considerable experience have been 

 deceived in this way, imagining, for example, that they were close to 

 the shore when in fact they were more than twenty miles off. The trees 

 of these lands are not more than three inches above ground. 



Many of the icebergs are five miles in extent, and some are to be 

 seen running along the shore measuring as much as thirteen miles. Dr. 

 Scoresby has seen a cliff of ice supported on those floating masses 402 

 feet in 'height. There is no place in the world where animal life is to 

 be found in greater profusion than in Greenland, Spitzbergen, Baffin's 

 Bay, and other portions of the Arctic regions. This is to be accounted 

 for by the abundance and richness of the food supplied by the sea. The 

 number of birds is especially remarkable. On one occasion, no less 

 than a million of little hawks'came in sight of Dr. Scoresby's ship within 

 a single hour. 



The various phenomena of the Greenland sea are very interesting. 

 The different colours of the sea- water olive or bottle-green, reddish- 

 brown, and mustard have, by the aid of the microscope, been found 

 to be owing to animalculse of these various colours : in a single drop of 

 mustard-colonred water have been counted 26,450 animals. Another 

 remarkable characteristic of the Greenland sea-water is its warm tem- 

 perature one, two, and three degrees above the freezing-point even in 

 the cold season. This Dr. Scoresby accounts for by supposing the flow 

 in that direction of warm currents from the south. The polar fields of 

 ice are to be found from eight or nine to thirty or forty feet in thick- 

 ness. By fastening a hook twelve or twenty inches in these masses of 

 ice, a ship could ride out in safety the heaviest gales. 



ICEBERG OF THE POLAR SEAS. 



The ice of this berg, although opaque and vascular, is true 

 glacier ice, having the fracture, lustre, and other external cha- 



