680 TIDES AND CURRENTS. 



was the coldest month, while January both times showed a rise 

 in the temperatm-e when compared either with December or 

 February. In winter the temperature was highly variable, and 

 sudden rises or falls were frequent ; in the three summer months, 

 however, the temperature was very constant, and changes very 

 rare. July was the warmest month. The lowest reading was 

 - 374° R. (nearly - 47° C.) The influence of extremely low 

 temperatures upon the human body has often been exaggerated; 

 there are tales of difficulty in breathing, pains in the breast, &c., 

 that are caused by them. Lieut. Weyprecht and his party did 

 not notice anything of the kind; and although many of them 

 had been born in southern climes, they all bore the cold very 

 easily indeed ; there were sailors amongst them who never had 

 fur coats on their bodies. Even in the greatest cold they all 

 smoked their cigars in the open air. The cold only gets unbear- 

 able when there is wind with it, and this always raises the tem- 

 perature. Altogether, the impression cold makes upon the body 

 differs widely according to personal disposition and the quantity 

 of moisture contained in the air ; the same degree of frost pro- 

 duces a very uncomfortable effect at one time, while at another 

 one does not feel it. 



",To determine the quantity of moisture in the atmosphere, an 

 ordinary psychrometer, a dry and a wet thermometer, were used. 

 But the observations with these instruments are not reliable at 

 low temperatures, and had to be given up altogether during 

 winter, as the smallest errors give great differences in the absolute 

 quantity of moisture in the air. In order to determine approxi- 

 mately the evaporation of ice dm'ing winter, Lieut. Weyprecht 

 exposed cubes of ice that had been carefully weighed to the open 

 air, and determined the loss of their weight every fourteen days." 



" During winter the air seemed always to contain particles of 

 ice; this was seen not only by parhelia and paraselense when the 

 sky was clear, but also in astronomical observations. The images 

 of celestial objects were hardly ever as clear and well defined as 

 they are at home, although the actual moisture in the atmosphere 

 was far less. It happened very often that with a perfectly clear 

 sky needles of ice were deposited in great quantities upon all 

 objects. It was quite impossible to determine the quantity of 

 atmospheric deposits, as during the snow-storms no distinction 

 could be made between the snow actually falling and that raised 

 from the ground by the storm ; it was remarkable, however, that 

 during the first winter the quantity of snow was small compared 

 with that of the second winter, when the snow almost completely 

 buried the ship (this happened near Franz-Joseph's Land). The 

 same proportion was repeated in the quantity of rain during 

 the first and second summer ; in the first only a little rain fell 

 late in the year, while in July 1874 it rained in torrents for 

 days. 



" Clouds are naturally of a very different character from those 

 seen at home ; nimbus and cumulus are never seen. The form 

 of cloud is either that uniform melancholy grey of an elevated 

 fog, or ciiTus ; the latter consists of round but undefined masses 



