president's addkess. 261 



the most abundant harvests ; and further to the south the Jenisei 

 and its tributaries run through regions where the grape ripens 

 on the bare ground." Such is the Swedish Professor's report 

 of this new Land of Promise, who further tells of his com- 

 panion's, the shrewd Norwegian farmer's cry of envy, when he 

 saw it, "of the splendid land our Lord had given to 'the Russian,' 

 and of astonishment that no creature pastured, no scythe mowed 

 the grass."* 



Meanwhile the "Challenger" Expedition has been adding 

 many new discoveries to the domain of science, in the Pacific 

 and Antartic Oceans by its deep-sea soundings and dredgings, 

 which are watched with such interest by many of our members 

 who have themselves done good service in similar operations on 

 our own coasts. But it is to the opposite Pole and to the last 

 Arctic expedition of the British Government that the minds of 

 the English people everywhere have been directed for many 

 months past with anxious expectation. Among the terrible ice- 

 bergs of Smith's Sound, amidst the appalling darkness of the long- 

 Arctic winter Captain Nares and Commander Markham, with 

 their brave scientific associates and picked crews, have been 

 preparing to bring to light in the ensuing summer, if God will it. 

 another and still more insoluble mystery of nature than that of 

 the Nile sources. In that hitherto impenetrable region, where 

 no foot of mortal man has ever yet stood, unless the Eskimo tra- 

 dition of a lost tribe existing at the Pole itself prove true, the 

 flag of England may this year be unfurled, and science in every 

 branch, meteorology, geology, botany, zoology, and physical 

 geography especially, be enriched through our countrymen's self- 

 sacrificing bravery. Since the time when Captain Cook, the first 

 scientific navigator, whose footsteps as a boy we followed in our 

 last Field Meeting at lloseberry and Ayton in Cleveland, pene- 

 trated in 1778, the summer before his death at Owhyhee, as far 

 as the Icy Cape, the North- West Passage has been effected by 

 British enterprise, and the northern coast line of America, with 

 its vast archipelago completely traced. But it is a singular fact 

 that, notwithstanding the important discoveries in recent years 



* Letter of Prof. A. E. Nordcnskjbld, "Nature," Dee. •-', 1870, p, !)j-7. 



