262 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
hatched out by this time, have just commenced to arrive and lay their eggs. We 
will start north to-morrow, or perhaps this evening if the ice shows a break. I 
don’t expect to get further than Kotzebue Sound for a month. We won’t spare 
her, but will push on as fast as possible. I have no fears but we can go as far as 
any one. ‘The Corwin has good power and is very strong. 
IS THERE AN OPEN POLAR SEA ? 
CONCLUSIONS AGAINST THE POPULAR THEORY DRAWN FROM THE RESULTS OF MANY 
BOLD AND ENERGETIC EXPLORATIONS. 
Dr. I. I. Hayes, the Arctic Explorer, in a recent letter to the New York 
flerald, expressed his well known views in reference to the existence of an open 
polar sea; to which a Springfield, Mass., correspondent takes excepticn as 
follows :— 
In Dr. Hayes’ letter on the prospects of the Jeannette there is one paragraph 
which is of so much importance in view of the history of opinion in regard to the 
open polar sea, that I wish to advance some considerations weighing against the 
opinion there expressed, in the hope that Dr. Hayes may see fit to publish his 
views more at length in the Herald. 
In speaking of the intention of Captain DeLong he says :—‘‘ Of course no 
one imagines that there can be any such thing as a sea about the Pole wholly free 
from ice, but it is equally inconceivable that so large a body of water, embracing 
an area of more than three millions of square miles, could be at any time firmly 
and completely frozen over.” And he infers that should captain DeLong reach 
the northern termination of Wrangell Land he would encounter large areas of 
open navigable water. The opinion here expressed by Dr. Hayes that there is 
in the extreme north a virtually open sea, is the same as he advances at the close 
of his account of his attempt to reach the open polar sea in 1860—61; and the 
arguinent is also the same—viz: that within the encircling shores of the northern 
continents, that is, roughly, within the parallel of eighty degrees north latitude, 
there is a vast expanse of sea where the ice cannot fasten itself to the land and wil] 
therefore of necessity be broken to pieces by wave action. Now, if it were an 
ascertained fact that there is this vast polar water, this conclusion might seem to 
be necessary ; but what support is there to the opinion that we have this great un- 
broken expanse of water at all? 
The progress of northern exploration, great as it has been, has never yet ad- 
vanced beyond the boundaries of land. Parry, to be sure, in his remarkable at- 
tempt to reach the Pole from Spitzbergen, penetrated to 82° 45’ without finding 
land, but his journey proves nothing as to its existence-or absence within a com- 
paratively small distance of his furthest point, for traveling on the ice, he could 
not possibly have distinguished a low Arctic coast at a few miles distance. The 
memorable experience of the Austrian expedition of 1872 is well known. After 
