346 Miscellanea. 
summer debacles, issuing from the mouths of the gigantic rivers of Siberia, 
or to the great predominance of water, and with it a milder climate, it is to 
be inferred that, if a steam-vessel were to be steered during the winter or 
spring months directly N. E. from the British Isles, she might pass into 
the Polar seas in a fortnight or little more without encountering any 
serious obstacle, and thus be soon in a position which our own ships have 
been struggling to reach through defiles of land-locked water encumbered 
by ice. 
This ingenious hypothesis seems to rest on some good preliminary data ; 
for at Bear Island, beyond North Cape (the Cherrie Island of early English 
navigators), my friend, the praiseworthy Norwegian geologist, Keilhau,* 
the author of the ‘‘ Gea Norvegica,” who visited it in 1827, obtained from 
some seamen in Hammerfest, who passed the winter of 1823-4 upon it, 
certain curious meteorological data, showing the mildness of the climate in 
that high latitude (74° 30’), where they encountered no severe cold, and saw 
neither packed nor floating ice in the sea. Again, in August 1827, that 
very successful Arctic explorer, Sir Edward Parry, proceeded, in spite of a 
powerful counter-current, to the most northerly point (N. 82° 40’ 23”) ever 
reached in our day, and found no bottom to the sea at 500 fathoms depth, 
no land visible, and little ice with much rain. 
This modification of climate in so northern a latitude is doubtless due to 
the same cause, the proximity of a great sea, as in the well-known ex- 
ample of the long and narrow Siberian promontory of Taimyr, explored by 
our former medallist Middendorff, and to which I formerly invited your 
attention. + In other words, it is caused by the predominance of water 
over land; the former tempering cold, the latter when in great masses 
producing it. It is then by the application of this distribution of heat and 
cold, which resulted in the establishment of the isothermal lines of the great 
philosophic geographer Humboldt, as wellas by attention to the fact of the 
vast icy masses of the North Siberian shores being held together to the land 
during the winter, that Mr. Petermann } has made the novel suggestion, 
that a winter, or rather an early spring, search should be attempted 
through a belt of water which is too broad to be affected by congelation ; 
and that this effort should be carried out at a time when this sea is not 
rendered impassable (as it is in summer) by floating fields of ice proceeding 
from the Siberian shores. As an instructive map to explain this author’s 
views has been prepared, and the project is under the consideration of the 
* My eminent geological friend, Leopold von Buch, first made known 
to the German public, in 1846, the importance of M. Keilhau’s observations 
in Bear Island, and deduced therefrom some important generalizations 
(‘ Trans. Berlin Acad. of Sciences.) A translation of his memoir, by 
Professor J. Nicol, is given in the ‘‘ Journal of the Geological Society of 
London,” vol. iii., Translations and Notices, p. 48. 
t See Journ. R. Geogr. Society, vol. xv., President’s Address, p. cii. 
t Since the Address was read, Mr. Petermann has embodied his views on 
various Arctic topics in one pamphlet, entitled, ‘‘ The Search for Franklin,” 
with the polar chart above alluded to, &e. 
