126 



NA TURE 



{Dec. lo, i! 



his subject ; the explanation of the principles and 

 methods involved in the determination of the sun's 

 distance by means of Transits of \'enii3, for example, is 

 particularly meagre and unsatisfactory. The public that 

 does not care to have to exert much thought over its 

 reading is not the public that will purchase books on 

 astronomy 550 pages in length ; an occasional light article 

 in a magazine will satisfy its utmost craving. 



Nevertheless a book which in a lucid and easy style 

 supplies accurate and the latest information as to the 

 methods and discoveries of astronomy, which is written 

 by a competent authority, and which, if not profusely 

 illustrated, is supplied with plates and woodcuts which 

 leave no important object unrepresented, no fundamental 

 argument unsupported, can only be spoken of as a good 

 one ; and those who wish to possess a full, interesting, 

 and popular account of the present state of the most 

 noble and enthralling of all the sciences cannot do better 

 than make themselves possessors of the "Story of the 

 Heavens." 



OUR BOOK SHELF 



Annual Rcpoii of the Board of Regents of the Smith- 

 sonia?! Institution for the Year 1SS3. (Washington: 

 ■Government Printing Office, 1885.) 

 This is the most bulky, and perhaps the most valuable, 

 of these well-known Reports ; it consists of very nearly 

 1000 pages, and we learn, from the resolution of Congress 

 which precedes it, that 16,060 copies have been printed. 

 The more strictly official part of it deals with the Smith- 

 sonian Institution and the Natural History Museum, 

 including the Report of the Committee on the Henry 

 statue recently erected in the grounds ; but, besides these, 

 we have Reports on the various branches of science, so 

 A'aluable that no scientific library should be without them. 

 Astronomy has been taken in hand by Prof. Holden, 

 the newly-appointed Director of the Lick (Observatory ; 

 meteorology, by Mr. Cleveland Abbe ; physics, by Prof 

 Barker ; zoologj-, by Prof Guild ; and anthropology by 

 Mr. Otis T. IMason, the latter covering nearly 200 pages. 

 Other branches of science besides those which we have 

 named are reported at less length. 



When we consider the importance of these re'sunies, 

 and the fact that 7000 copies of the volume are being 

 distributed gratuitously by the Institution all over the 

 world, we may readily concede that in this, as in their 

 other duties, the Regents of the Institution are faithful 

 to the trust imposed upon them by Smithson to promote 

 the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men. 



The Sii?t : a Familiar Description of His Phenomena. 

 By the Rev. Thomas William Webb, M..A.., F.R.A.S. 

 (London: Longmans, 18S5.) 



This is a little book of seventy-eight pages, containing 

 what appears to have been a lecture given by the author, 

 who, to the great loss of observational astronomy, died a 

 short tinie ago. That part of it which deals with the 

 telescopic facts is very much more in harmony with our 

 present knowledge than that smaller part of it which 

 deals with the revelations of the spectroscope. The 

 whole is very charmingly and simply written. 



Notes on the Physiological Laboratory of the Univcisity 

 of Pennsylvania. By N. A. Randolph, M.D., and 

 .S. G. Dixon. (Philadelphia, 1885.) 

 This little volume consists of a series of short papers 

 giving the results of practical investigations into the 

 behaviour of certain substances, such as starch, cod-liver 

 oil, boiled and unboiled milk, &c., when used as articles 



of food by infants and adults. Many of the papers are of 

 interest ; all of them show evidence that in the Uni- 

 versity of Philadelphia, physiology is not taught as a 

 matter of book-learning, but that the students are in- 

 structed in the practical bearings of the science. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 



\The Editor does not hold himself responsible for opiniotis expressed 

 by his correspondents. Neither can he undertake to return, 

 or to correspond with the writers o/j rejected manuscripts. 

 No notice is taken of anonymous communications. 



[ The Editor urgently requests correspondents to keep their letters 

 as short as possible. The pressure on his space is so great 

 that it is impossible otherwise to insure the appearance even 

 of cojntnujticationscontainin^inierestingand novel facts.'X 



Lieutenant Greely on Ice 



I H.^VE read with deep interest the graphic but brief account 

 of Lieut. Greely's Arctic explorations given in Nature of 

 November 26 (p. 90), and also in some of the Scottish papers, 

 which touch upon subjects not mentioned in Nature. 



Assuming that these reports are, in all material points, correct, 

 I ask leave to be permitted to offer some remarks on a few of 

 the opinions expressed by the distinguished explorer, the correct- 

 ness of which seems open to question. 



Before doing so, hoHever, 1 would draw attention to the very 

 considerable difference in the mean yearly temperatures at Dis- 

 covery Bay, as given by tlie English Government ship that 

 wintered there in 1875-76, and that of Lieut. Greely wintering 

 at the same place six or seven years later. 



Capt. Stephenson, H.M.S. Discovery, 1875-76 ... -4°'23 F. 

 Lieut. Greely, in house six or seven years later, about -l-4°'oo 



Making a difference of 8°"23 



I suppose the thermometers to be in both cases correct, and 

 ihe mean temperatures computed in the same manner in each 

 case. In saying that " Grinnell Land has the lowest mean 

 temperature in the globe," surely Lieut. Greely goes a little too 

 far, as no observations have elsewhere been made in so high a 

 latitude, nor at any point in the great circle of 1 100 miles' 

 diameter nearer to the Pole than Discovery Bay, in nearly all 

 parts of which it would be a very natural conclusion to arrive 

 at, that the mean temperature would be lower. Lieut. Greely 

 adds, "This" (the lowest temperature in the globe) " was in 

 accordance with their expectation." 



Kane went to the Arctic Sea with "expectation" and a belief 

 that he would find an open Polar sea ! His steward, Morton, 

 conveniently found it for him, and it was believed in for a time, 

 until other expeditions passed the place where " Morton's pool" 

 of open water had been seen ; but alas ! not a trace of it could 

 be found, although ships had gone by, creeping along shore, 

 some hundred miles further north. The distinguished Green- 

 land explorer Rink, finally, effectually demolished this Arctic 

 dream. Lieut. Greely's open Polar sea of iioo miles' diameter 

 round the Pole seems to be a myth of a somewhat similar kind. 

 It is purely a theory, with facts, to my mind, adverse to its 

 probability ; for why this immense body of water in the far 

 north, whilst constantly sending forth great ice-streams south- 

 ward through the broad inter-Greenland-Spitzbergen Channel, 

 should be itself ice-free, whilst other seas far southward, having a 

 much higher temperature, and probably with currents and gales 

 of wind at least as strong, are ice-encumbered, is rather difficult 

 to understand. 



As regards floebergs, Lieut. Greely has advanced their size 

 and thickness far beyond anything one would inter from reading 

 the narrations of the English Expedition of 1S75-76, which 

 first gave the name to those curious masses of ice. He 

 has not only done this, but he attributes their formation .to 

 a source which completely destroys the meaning of the name 

 " fioeberg," used in contradistinction to "iceberg," to show 

 that the former has its origin from the floe or sea ice, instead 

 of from ice formed on land, and is either built up by the 

 gradual increment of the floe and the snow that falls upon 

 it, or, as I believe more likely, by a number of floes being 

 forced by immense pressure one over the other, until great 

 thickness is attained. Perhaps the best example of a fioeberg 

 (accuding to my idea) that I can give, is that which lifted the 

 shii) of the Austrian Expedition seventeen feet (I think) out of 



