293 



NA TURE 



[July 24 il 



which easily crumbles into dust. The cock bird perched him- 

 self on the tree over my head, and began pecking with wonder- 

 ful rapidity at this lichen and moss, so that, the moment I 

 looked up. a shower of fine dust fell on my face. As I fol- 

 lowed the young bird, the old one followed me, got on a branch 

 as close to my head as he could, and sent a shower of dust down 

 upon me. I can scarcely doubt that the dust, like the previous 

 swoops, was intended rather to blind me than to distract my 

 attention. Have instances of like sagacity — i.e. the apparent 

 knowledge of the organ of vision and the means of injuring it — 

 been noticed in jays before? Karl Pearson 



Saig, Schwarzwald, July 14 



Munro and Jamieson's Electrical Pocket-Book 

 As Mr. A. Gray's criticism of our " Pocket-Book " is chiefly 

 confined to literal errors practically unavoidable in a work of 

 the kind, we take the opportunity of stating that we have lately 

 been correcting these for the second edition, which, we are 

 happy to say, has already been called for. 



J. Munro and A. Jamieson 



I observe that in my article in the last number of Nature 

 the third sentence of the third paragraph of p. 263, beginning 

 " In the particular case, &c," should have the words "corrected 

 for the heat of combination of copper oxide and sulphuric acid " 

 inserted after the word "this." A. Gray 



Glasgow, July 21 



THE ORE ELY EXPEDITION 



SUCCESS has at last attended the efforts to rescue the 

 expedition to Lady Franklin Bay under Lieut. 

 Greely ; but, alas, out of the twenty-five men who started 

 three years ago nineteen have perished. The party had 

 left their station, Fort Conger, in August last, but did not 

 succeed in getting further south than Cape Sabine, in 

 Ellesmere Land, at the entrance to Smith Sound, about 

 1 50 miles from Lady Franklin Bay, and some 300 or 400 

 miles from LTpernivik, the nearest Danish station. It is 

 easy now to say that it would have been much better for 

 the'expedition to have stayed on in their comparatively 

 comfortable quarters at Discovery Bay ; the chances are 

 that they would all have survived, and probably all have 

 been rescued this summer by the relief party in the Bear 

 and the Thetis. 



We may remind our readers that the Greely expedition 

 was sent out by the Government of the United States as 

 one of the series of International Arctic expeditions, the 

 main purpose of which was to take regular observations, 

 according to a preconcerted plan, on the meteorological 

 and other physical conditions of the Polar area. As the 

 Greely expedition had to go much further north than any 

 of the others, it started -a year earlier in order to be sure 

 to reach its post in time and be able to begin observations 

 not later than August 1S82. It was thoroughly equipped, 

 both with scientific apparatus and with the material for a 

 comfortable life under unusually trying conditions. The 

 provisions supplied could have easily been made to last 

 until the present summer, and we know from letters from 

 Lieut. Greely, written shortly after his arrival, that the 

 region around Lady Franklin Bay, Si°44' N. lat., abounded 

 in musk oxen. In the summer of 1882 strenuous efforts 

 were made to reach the station, but with no success. Last 

 year two vessels were sent out, but the state of the ice 

 was such that one was completely crushed and the other 

 was glad to escape southwards almost as soon as it had 

 entered the threshold of the intricate channel that led to 

 Fort Conger. 



The expedition which has been so fortunate as to rescue 

 the six survivors consisted of the United States ships Bear 

 and Thetis and Her Majesty's ship Alert, which was pre- 

 sented to the United States Government for the purpose. 

 The condition in which the few survivors were found is 

 almost too harrowing to record ; how very nearly too late 

 the rescue party were is impressively shown by the fact 



that Lieut. Greely, surrounded by his prostrate com- 

 panions, was reading the service for the dying. " The 

 red syenite rock forming Cape Sabine," Sir George Nares 

 tells us, " and the islands in the neighbourhood of Payer 

 Harbour is sterile and barren to the last degree. During 

 the three days we were detained there, although parties 

 from the ships explored the whole of the immediate 

 neighbourhood, very little animal life was seen." The 

 end of the cape or peninsula is cut into by a bay in which 

 are several islands — Brevoort, Payer, Stalknecht, &c. 

 Here Sir George Nares in 1875 left 250 rations, which do 

 not seem to have been discovered by the Greely party ; 

 and of the 50,000 lbs. of food buried for them by the 

 rescuing parties Lieut. Greely succeeded in finding only 

 250 lbs. 



For full details as to the work accomplished by the un- 

 fortunate expedition during its almost three years' stay in 

 so high a latitude we must await the publication of the 

 records. Happily all the records have been saved, and 

 thus the gain to science is likely to be of unusual value. 

 What are the hardships to be met with, and the aspects 

 of nature to be witnessed in this remote latitude, we know 

 something of already from the records of our own expe- 

 dition ten years ago under Sir George Nares. But the 

 present expedition, profiting by the experience of its pre- 

 decessors, and working on a carefully prearranged plan, 

 is likely enough to tell us much that we never dreamt of. 

 While the main work of the party was to make regular 

 observations in physical science, it is evident that they 

 have taken advantage of their exceptional position to 

 push back the limits of our ignorance of Arctic geography. 

 The lowest temperature experienced is stated to have been 

 61° below zero F. We all remember the exciting narra- 

 tive of the painful scramble of Commander Markham 

 and his brave men over the " pateocrystic ice" in order 

 to make the attempt at least to reach the Pole. After 

 about sixty miles they had to return baffled, glad to 

 escape with their lives. Markham and Parr and their 

 men had, however, the satisfaction of having attained 

 the highest latitude ever reached — 83° 20' 26". Lieut. 

 Lockwood, however, succeeded in getting some four or 

 five miles (83° 24') beyond Markham's farthest, and 19° to- 

 the east of the English route. 



Lieut. Lockwood, unhappily among the dead, seems to' 

 have been one of the most active and enterprising 

 members of the expedition. He followed Lady Franklin 

 Bay in its continuation, Archer Fjord, ninety miles 

 beyond Beatrix Bay, Nares's furthest, quite to the other 

 side of Grinnell Land, which he found to be an island, 

 separated by Archer Fjord from the land to the south, 

 now named Arthur Land. This was confirmed by the 

 view obtained from Mount Arthur, 5000 feet high, west of 

 the Conger Mountains, which may possibly be the range 

 named after the L T nited States by Sir George Nares. 

 This Grinnell Land seems in many ways to be an inter- 

 esting region ; there are evidently several peaks or 

 mountain ranges reaching a height of 5000 feet. A con- 

 siderable area both on the north and south shores is 

 covered by an ice-cap 1 50 feet thick, while, so far as we 

 can judge from the report, there is a belt of comparatively 

 open country in the interior some sixty miles wide. 

 Even so late as March last, when the members of the 

 expedition were dying one by one on Cape Sabine, ex- 

 ploration was not neglected. From Mount Carey to the 

 north-west of the cape Sergeant Long obtained an ex- 

 tensive observation in the direction of Hayes Sound, 

 which showed him that the Sound extends twenty miles 

 further to the west than is shown on Sir George Nares's 

 chart. 



On his journey northwards Lieut. Lockwood succeeded 

 in reaching 7° further east than Lieut. Beaumont's 

 furthest in 1875. From a height of 2000 feet he saw 

 no land to trie north or north-west of Greenland, but 

 away to the north-east, in lat. 83° 35', and long. 3S' S2',. 



