50 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XXI. No 521 



support a cold of — 40° C. (mercury is congealed at — 39° C. ; alco- 

 hol alone, highly rectified, can mark tlie low temperatures we give 

 here), with piercing northern winds. The horses and camels died; 

 man resisted. 



The northern parts of America have known still more severe 

 'colds. Captain Back reported at Fort Reliance — 56.74° C, and Cap- 

 tain Dawson.at FortRae.in 62° 30' north latitude, — 67°C..in April, 

 i882. Other explorers have never observed such low temperature. 

 The Abbe Petitot gives us — 40° C, as the mean temperature of 

 January at Fort Good Hope, and — 35" C. for January, and — 43° 

 C. for February, at Yukon, Alaska. 



In Siberia we find the coldest points inhabited by compara- 

 tively civilized men. In the government of Yenissei, the winter 

 time is double the summer time. Autumn sets in in August, 

 and the Yenissei River is completely frozen by the month of 

 October. Yakoutsk was long considered the coldest town of the 

 world. During the winter months the thermometer is as low as 



— 45° C. But Yakoutsk must yield to Verkhoyansk, a small 

 Siberian town at the mouth of the Lena, where we find — 55° C. in 

 January. And yet this cold is far from being the most severe 

 suffered in those dreary regions. A Frenchman, Mr. Martin, re- 

 cently dead, travelling in Eastern Siberia, wrote to the Society of 

 Geography, of Paris, that he experienced in 59° north latitude 

 and 132° east longitude a cold of - 63" C. 



Physical phenomena, the differences in the relation of thecon- 

 ttinents and the oceans, have a greater importance than was sus- 

 pected some years ago. Yakoutsk, which I have just mentioned, 

 is only 6° nearer the pole than Edinburgh, and numerous arctic 

 islands are on the same latitude. Yet Edinburgh and these isl- 

 ands enjoy a much warmer climate, thanks to the Gulf Stream, 

 so well studied by Lieutenant Maury, one of the glorious scien- 

 tists of our day. 



This is probably the cause that some of the polar lands do not 

 always experience the extreme cold we find in some parts of Si- 

 beria. Captain Nare's careful observations in Grinnell Land, in 

 1875-6, only give for January - 36° C, for February - 38° C, for 

 March— 39.90° C, for November -27. 13° C, for December- 36.6° C. 

 Nordenskjold, in one of his latest yoyages, speaks of — 47.7° C. 

 We have still higher records. Lieutenant Greely, in his illfated 

 ■expedition, tells us that during his long stay at Discovery Bay 

 the temperature maxima never exceeded -i- 50° (Fahrenheit) and 

 was at one time as low as — 66° F. This difference of tempera- 

 ture, supported in a few months time by the same men, is most 

 remarkable. Hunger, dearth of provisions, incredible hardships 

 ■broke down those who had so bravely suffered extreme cold. 



Nothing daunted by the cruel fate of Lieutenant Greely's com- 

 panions. Lieutenant Peary tried, in his turn, to attain the solution 

 of the northern problem, and, with a courage which does infinite 

 honor to her sex, Mrs. Peary elected to accompany her husband. 

 They wintered, in 1891, in MacCormick Bay, about a hundred 

 miles distant from the great Humboldt Iceberg, and lived for 

 three months under a temperature varying from — 30° C. to— 50°C. 

 without experiencing any very great inconvenience. It is Lieu- 

 tenant Peary, if I make no mistake, who approached the nearest 

 to the Pole. He got farther than Frederick William's Land and 

 Cape Bismarck, the extreme northern points reached before him.. 



In one of the last polar expeditions attempted by the English, 

 in the month of November the thermometer marked — 60° C, and 

 on the 25th of January it went down to — 63° C. on board the 

 " Varna" and the " Dymphna," blockaded in the ice. 



But probably the highest amount of cold ever suffered by white 

 ■man is the one recorded by Mr. Gilder, a reporter of the New 

 York Herald attached to the expedition which, under command 

 ■of Lieutenant) Schwatka, went in search of Franklin. In the 

 letters sent home during the winter of 1879-80, so severe in all 

 parts of the world,' he speaks of the thermometer lower than 



— 71° C. Here again we find men of our race supportiog an 

 almost incredible amount of cold from November, 1879, to March, 

 1830. Their power of endurance may be attributed to their stay 

 at Camp Daly from August, 1878, to March, 1879. ' They experi- 



' As a comparison, I give the lowest temperature experleuced In Paris dur- 

 ing the last century. January 20, 1788, - 81.5° C; Jauuary 25, 1793, - 23.5° C; 

 December 9, 1871, - 81.3° C; December 10, 1879, - 83 9° C. 



enced there a range of temperature from -(-14° C. to — 51°C. The 

 members of the expedition had adopted the way of living of the 

 Innuits. Like them, they fed on the raw flesh of the seals and 

 the walrus and absorbed large quantities of oily and fatty mat- 

 ters which prevented the spread of scorbutic diseases, so fatal to 

 many of their predecessors. The tents were rapidly discarded 

 and replaced by iglous, the native winter houses of hard frozen 

 ice, which, curious enough, offer a considerable amount of heat. 

 Their clothes were made of reindeer skin without any linen 

 underclothing, so as not to put a stop to perspiration. 



Another day I will compile the highest amount of heat sup- 

 ported by men of the white race. I will only mention here that 

 in Algeria, by no means the hottest point of the globe, our sol- 

 diers have often seen the thermometer as high as -I- 51° C, and Mr. 

 Buveyrier, in his travels amongst the Touaregs, noted + 67.7° C. 

 If we compare this extreme heat (and we will certainly find 

 higher points) the difference between — 71°C., recorded in the 

 Schwatka expedition, and + 67.7° C. reach nearly 138° C, and tes- 

 tify, as I said in the beginning, to the remarkable power of endur- 

 ance of the white race. 



BEZOARS. 



BY ELIZA BRIGHTWEN, GREAT STANMOEB, ENGLAND. 



The almost fabulous value set upon Bezoars in olden days, and 

 the medical virtues often attributed to them, invest these concre- 

 tions, which are found in the alimentary canal of animals, both 

 wild and domestic, with a certain amount of interest ; and, al- 

 though belief in their curative power has long since passed away, 

 it may be deemed worth while to try and put together a few 

 items about their history and uses. 



The name of Bezoar appears to be derived from the Persian 

 pad (expelling) and zahr (poison), in allusion to the supposed 

 virtues of the stone as aremedy for snake-bites and other wounds. 

 Others again derive it from the name of the goat in which one 

 variety is found. 



These stones were introduced as medicines in the Bast by the 

 Arabian physicians in the tenth century, there seems to be no 

 mention of them in Greek or Latin authors, but from the East 

 their use gradually spread into Europe. They are referred to by 

 Frampton as far back as 1580, and as late as 1746 these stones 

 were in use in England, being found in the London Pharmacopoeia 

 of that date. A severe blow to their reputation was administered 

 by Ambrose Pare, who gave a dose of Bezoar to a criminal con- 

 demned to death and to whom arsenic had been given, death, 

 however, was the result. 



In the Royal College of Surgeons' Museum in London cases may 

 be seen filled with all the various kinds of concretions whioli have 

 been found in the intestines of different animals, including some 

 very fine bezoars. 



They may be roughly divided into six classes: — 



1. Balls composed of animal hairs. 



2. Those composed of vegetable hairs. 



3. The Oriental Bezoars, composed of ellagic acid. 



4. The Occidental Bezoars, formed of resin or bezoardic acid. 



5. Concretions of phosphate of magnesia, ammonia, and earthy 

 calculi. 



6. Ambergris, found in the intestines of the whale. 



We will briefly notice facts relating to each of these classes. 



I. Animals, especially horses and oxen, are much given to lick- 

 ing each other and themselves, and the loose hairs being swal- 

 lowed become felted into spherical balls of various sizes, generally 

 black in color, with a hard, shiny surface, which often consists 

 of phosphate of magnesia. 



In the College of Surgeons' Museum there is one such hair-ball, 

 taken out of an ox at Buenos Ayres, which measures forty inches 

 in circumference, and one of oval shape, found in a peccary, mea- 

 sures six inches by four in diameter. 



II. Vegetable hair concretions are usually formed round some 

 nucleus, such as a horse-nail, plumstone, or a piece of flint. 



The setas of the oat seem to have a constant tendency to form 



