Oct. 29, 1874 1 



NATURE 



525 



tion of Weypreclit and Payer, not worthless ? Is it worth 

 nothing that numerous Norwegian fishermen in sailing 

 boats have been able to sail round Novaya Zemlya since 

 1869 and penetrate far into the Siberian ice sea, always 

 finding it navigable and quite free from ice? Is it not 

 worth remembering that at the time Payer and Weyprecht 

 found the unwonted accumulation of ice by Novaya 

 Zemlya, the western half of the great sea, quite against 

 the rule, was free from ice, so that the Norwegian fisher- 

 men were able for the first time to reach the mystic Gillis- 

 land, which is King Charles Land ? Under certain 

 unfavourable conditions of wiatering, the north side of 

 Novaya Zemlya is, without doubt, as difficult and impos- 

 sible for navigation as the north side of Spitzbergen, or 

 Cape Horn, or the Cape of Good Hope, or the English 

 Channel, or the mouth of the \Yeser. 



The Tegctthof is a small steamer of 220 tons, and 

 though her supply of coal was necessarily small, it proved 

 ample, for steam could only be got up three times in the 

 first three weeks of the voyage. And thus, as in all 

 recent voyages, rowing boats proved themselves better 

 fitted than steam launches for exploring work. In the 

 summer of 1S72, the journey from Cape Nassau could 

 not be made in a straight course, but Count Wilczek's 

 journey in the sailing vessel Isbjiuii demonstrated that it 

 was practicable by following a tortuous course. 



The best and first account of the results of the Aus- 

 trian expedition, in relation to their bearing on the pre- 

 sent state of knowledge of arctic geography, and of the 

 current setting into the icy sea from the south, is given 

 by Dr. Joseph Chavanne, and is as follows : — 



"The rising polar sun of 1S74 lighted up and dis- 

 covered a new land, now named Franz Joseph Land, and 

 the expedition set off to explore it in sledges. They 

 found the country to be a narrow, far-extending foreland, 

 divided from Greenland by a wide arm of the sea now 

 named Austria Sound. It is mountainous, approaching 

 to a plateau, with steep conical mountains 5,000 feet 

 high, covered with enormous glaciers. This newly dis- 

 covered land stretches for more than 15" of longitude, 

 and bounds the horizon with mountains as far as the eye 

 can carry to the north and west. In 83° N. lat. they 

 sighted Cape Vienna, the most northern point visible, 

 and Cape Pesth, one degree further south, and finding 

 the great glaciers impassable in this latitude, they 

 returned to their icebound ship. Imperative necessity 

 compelled them to abandon their vessel upon its icy plat- 

 form, and they set out to return to Europe with four 

 sledges. They travelled on for sixty-nine days, and then fell 

 in with the Russian schooner Nikolai, who landed them 

 at Vardoe, in the north of Norway. Austria Sound, and 

 other fjords, were filled with icebergs. They met with no 

 trace of human inhabitants, and remark that animal and 

 plant life is scarce and small in the south." 



Twenty-two years ago Ur. Petermann indicated on a 

 map of the arctic regions the polar extension of the Gulf 

 Stream. Though generally regarded at the time m.erely 

 as the hypothesis of a German philosopher, the unwilling 

 drifting of the Tci:,ctthof in the ice has proved that the 

 principal northern branch of the Gulf Stream washes the 

 west and northern coast of Novaya Zemlya. Between the 

 west coast of Novaya Zemlya and the east coast of Spitz- 

 bergen, enormous masses of ice press westward with the 

 polar current flowing from New Siberia Island and the 

 Siberian rivers, and penetrate wedge-like into the Gulf 

 Stream. The temperature of Franz Joseph Land in the 

 winter of 1 87 2 -73 was 40*' Reaumur. 



The remarkable correspondence between the coasts on 

 the two sides of Greenland supports the conjecture that 

 the polar land, if not subdivided into a number of islands 

 by ramifying arms of the sea, is at least deeply indented 

 by fjords, as is demonstrated by Hall's discovery of 

 Petermann's Fjord on the west coast of Greenland and 

 Franz Joseph's Fjord on the east. 



PHYSICS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON* 



II. 



' pURNING then first of all to the Regulations for Matri- 

 -'- culation in the University of London, we^find that the 

 knowledge of Physics that is required is specified under four 

 heads : namely, Mechanics : Hydi ostaiics, Hydyaiilics, 

 and Pneumatics ; Optics ; and Heat, which last, until 

 quite recently, was included in the examination in Che- 

 mistry ; and the whole is accompanied by a general 

 qualifying note to the effect that " the questions in 

 Natural Philosophy will be of a strictly elementary cha- 

 racter." The particulars, which are given under each of 

 the above general heads, read as if they might have been 

 copied, as they stand, from the table of contents of an 

 elementary treatise on Natural Philosophy published 

 about a hundred years ago. I have examined them often 

 and carefully, and have never found a tittle of internal 

 evidence to show that they were drawn up within the 

 present century ; and yet we know that they arc the work 

 of a University, not yet forty years old, which owes its 

 very existence to the demand for educational progress, 

 and began its career — without indeed the wealth or the 

 prestige of its older compeers — but also without the 

 trammels of tradition and ecclesiasticism, which render it 

 so difficult for them to advance with the times. It is not 

 a sufficient defence of the antiquated character of these 

 Regulations to say that the very nature of the examination 

 to which they refer would make the introduction of new 

 discoveries entirely out of place, and that, in point of fact, 

 the fundamental doctrines relating to the subjects in 

 question were as fully established a hundred years ago as 

 they are now. This is so nearly true (except in the case 

 of Heat), that it would not be worth while to dispute it ; 

 but my objection is not to the want of novelty in the sub- 

 jects enumerated, but to the w^ant of perception, which 

 the manner of the enumeration indicates, of the possi- 

 bility of progress or improvement in the ways of teaching 

 long-known truths. Instead of giving prominence to 

 general principles in such a way as to suggest to teachers 

 the use of easy and comprehensive methods, these Regu- 

 lations cut up the suljjects to which they relate into a 

 number of detached propositions, of greater or less gene- 

 rality, which teachers and students, who accept these 

 Regulations as their guide, generally treat as independent 

 units of knowledge each of v/hich is to be put into a sepa- 

 rate hole of the memory. It would be wearisome, but not 

 dilhcult, to illustrate my meaning by particular examples ; 

 the substance of it is that this examination does not 

 encourage good teaching of the elementary parts of 

 Physics, but induces candidates to trust to memory 

 almost to the total exclusion of any attempt at thinking. 

 My opinions on this subject have not been formed 4 priori, 

 but have been forced upon me by reading examination 

 papers and by trying to teach in what I believed to be 

 the best way. It is in general nearly hopeless to try to 

 get students, who have the fear of the London Matricula- 

 tion Examination before their eyes, to make any serious 

 attempt to understand the principles of IMechanics ; but 

 they often show a lamentable willingness to learn state- 

 ments of them by heart, and when they go up for exami- 

 nation they know a great deal and understand next to 

 nothing. They know that in a lever of the first kind, 

 whose weight is neglected, the power is to the weight as 

 the weight's arm to the power's arm ; that when a heavy 

 body falls from rest, the spaces described in successive 

 seconds are as the natural series of odd numbers ; and 

 they are ready at the shortest notice to write down the 

 formula for calculating the specific gravity of a solid body 

 heavier than water ; but it is only in the rarest possible 



* Introductory Lecture delivered at the opening of the Session of the 

 Faculties of Arts and Laws ,-md of Science, in University College, London, 

 on Monday, Oct. 5, 1874, by G. Carey Foster, F.R.S., Professor of Physics. 

 Continued from p. 508. 



