June 12, 1891.J 



SCIENCE. 



333 



tainment and determination of the northern terminus of Green- 

 land, and everytliing will be subservient to that. 



" I shall be accompanied by five young men, and the following 

 particulars about the membei-s of the party may be of interest. 

 John M. VerhoefiE of Louisville, Ky., is a young man of twenty- 

 five, educated in an Eastern university, a mineralogist, and, 

 though somewhat below the average in stature, has a magnificent 

 lung development and a record for endurance and cross-country 

 walking. Mr. Verhoeff has contributed generously to the ex- 

 penses of the expedition. Dr. Frederick A. Cook, tlie surgeon of 

 the expedition, is an able young physician and surgeon, a native 

 of New York State, a graduate of the College of Physicians and 

 Surgeons and of the University of the City of New York, and has 

 been in practice in New York City for several years. He is 

 twenty-sis years old, strongly built, is five feet nine inches in 

 height, weighs a hundred and fifty pounds, and has a lung ex- 

 pansion of five inches. Langdon Gibson of Flushing, L.I., is a 

 stalwart young fellow of twenty-six, and one of the many active 

 and enthusiastic members of the American Ornithologists' Union. 

 He was one of the Brown-Stanton party in the memorable Colo- 

 rado Canon survey of 1889-90, and knows what arduous work is. 

 He is six feet tall, weighs a hundred and seventy-eight pounds, 

 and has an exceptionally fine lung development. Eivind Astriip 

 of Christiania, Norway, is a stalwart young fellow, who has but 

 recently come to this country. He is the son of the commander 

 of the Royal Civil Guard of Christiania, a first-class graduate of 

 the Christiana Comraeicial College, and a winner of numerous 

 prizes in athletic sports, especially ski-running. He is five feet 

 seven inches in height, weighs a hundred and sixty seven pounds, 

 and has a lung expansion of four inches. Matthew Henson is a 

 hardy young colored man, a native of Virginia, twenty-three 

 years old. His intelligence and faithfulness, combined with more 

 than average pluck and endurance, as shown during several years 

 that he has been with me through varying experiences, part of 

 the time in Nicaraguan jungles, lead me to regard him as a valu- 

 able member of the party. The members of my party are all 

 young, and, in addition to possessing first-class physique and per- 

 fect health, they are men of education and attainments. I be- 

 lieve this to be the ty^pe of man best fitted to endure with mini- 

 mum effect the ordeal of the Arctic winter, and to effectively 

 execute a two or three months' dash on sledges, where intelligent 

 will-power, elasticity, and enthusiasm are at a premium over the 

 stolid endurance of muscles hardened by years of work. Mrs. 

 Peary will accompany the party to Whale Sound. Possessed of 

 youth, health, energy, and enthusiastic interest in the work, she 

 sees no reason why she cannot endure conditions and environment 

 similar to those in which Danish wives in Greenland pass years 

 of their life. In this opinion I fully concur, and believe that in 

 many ways her presence and assistance will contribute to the 

 valuable results of the expedition, as they have been invaluable to 

 me in the preparation. 



" The food supply of the party is not materially different from 

 that of th3 later Arctic expeditions. Tea, coffee, sugar, and milk 

 are in quantity sufficient to last two and a half years; other sup- 

 plies for a year and a half. But little meat will be taken, outside 

 of the pemmican for the sledge journey, as there is an abundance 

 of reindeer, ptarmigan, Arctic hares, foxes, ducks, loons, seals, 

 and walrus in and about Whale Sound. Special items of interest, 

 principally for the sledge journey, are as follows: tea, compressed 

 into quarter-pound cakes, partially divided, like chocolate, into 

 quarter-ounce squares; compressed pea soup tablets, a German 

 preparation ; beef-meal pemraican and beef-meal and cocoa tab- 

 lets, prepared expressly for the expedition; evaporated cabbage, 

 potatoes, onions, turnips, carrots, and apples. 



" Next to the food supply comes the house. This will be a light 

 structure twelve by twenty feet (inside measurement) with double 

 walls inclosing a ten-inch air space. There will be a triangular 

 air space between the ceiling of the rooms and the roof sheathing, 

 and the rooms will have three layers of tarred paper between them 

 and the exterior air. The walls of the rooms will be hung at first 

 with blankets, and later probably with skins. The house will be 

 surrounded by a wall of stones, turf, and snow as high as the 

 eaves, leaving a narrow passage entirely around the house, and 



during the winter this space and the roof of the house itself will 

 covered in with a thick layer of snow. 



"The expedition will have two whale boats and several sledges, 

 including the two made and used by me in Greenland in 1886. 

 The new ones, though of the same type, will be lighter than the 

 old ones. Each member of the party will have Indian snowshoes 

 and Norwegian " ski" moccasins and rubber ice creepers." 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 



•«' Correspondents are requested to be as brief as possible. The writer's name 

 is in all cases required as proof of good faith. 



The editor will be glad to publish any queries consonant with the character 

 of the journal. 



On request, twenty copies of the number containing his communication will 

 be furnished free to any correspondent. 



Immortality in the Light of Modern Dynamics. 



I WOXJLD like, with your permission, to take issue with the 

 writer of the article under the above title published in Science of 

 May 29. 



The eleventh paragraph, speaking of the reader of the journal 

 of the Institute having " read the same lines " therein, " an endless 

 number of times," "billions of years ago," naturally suggests 

 doubts of his seriousness ; and if I am mistaken in the assumption 

 that a gentleman of his great attainments and high position is 

 surely in earnest while thus treating on scientific subjects before 

 that learned body, the Franklin Institute, and that therefore the 

 paper could not have been intended as a burlesque upon modern 

 science, it must be set down to my " simplicity." 



In his illustration by the falling of dice, he truly says that the 

 number of dice used has nothing to do with the truth of the propo- 

 sition that they must, some time, again present — and with a cer- 

 tain average frequency — the same combination of numbers. 

 Evidently, however, he quite overlooks one element of the case, 

 which omission — a most astonishing one — utterly vitiates his 

 illustration and reasoning thereon. 



The matter overlooked is the fact that each one of the dice is • 

 limited to a certain finite number of exact positions, in one of 

 which it must fall ; and after it has, once or more, fallen in each 

 of these, all subsequent falls must necessarily be exact repetitions 

 of some of these, hence the possible number of combinations is also 

 limited, and then must come repetitions. 



Let us suppose, however, that the dice, instead of cubes, be 

 perfect spheres, and thrown upon a perfect plane. The number 

 of positions in which any one could come to rest would be infinite, 

 and it is scarcely supposable that it would ever, in an eternity of 

 throws, take absolutely the same position a second time. Now, 

 such is the condition of the atoms spoken of, except that in their 

 case it is more complex, as their are more conditions. 



Every particular combination produced must, of course, be sim- 

 ply the resultant of the positions and motions of the atoms. The 

 possible positions and also the possible directions of motion, as well 

 as velocities, are infinite in number, hence the chances are infinity 

 to one against the same combination again occurring eren between 

 any two of them, — yea, an infinity of infinities. 



Moreover, when the same concurrence of the atoms should occur 

 and reconstruct the same identical form, — of Cissar, for example, 

 — an essential pre-requisite is, that all influences must be the same 

 as before, hence all surrounding conditions, near or remote, must 

 be identical with those of the former epoch; i.e., the universe 

 must be throughout exactly as before : there are no influences ex- 

 cept position and motion, hence every identical atom must be, at 

 the one instant, in the same one of the infinitively various posi- 

 tions, moving at the same one of the infinite different velocities, 

 and in the same one of the infinitely different directions, includ- 

 ing the infinite various vibrations, as before, — all this while it is 

 incredible that any one of them wiU ever move in absolutely the 

 same direction a second time, or that any one of the conditions 

 requisite to the repetition of a former combination will ever exist. 

 An infinitesimal difference from the former time in the case of 

 any one atom in the universe in any particular at that instant 



