NOTES. 573 
Behring’s Strait. ‘‘ Knowing the size of a dog’s throat it is easy 
to tell what he can swallow.” Behring’s Strait is twenty-five 
miles wide, and has an average depth of twenty-five fathoms. 
The rate of the current is from one and a half to three knots an 
hour. The current, therefore, must be of little account, and 
entirely inadequate to produce the effect attributed to it by M. 
Pavy. Still Professor Davidson felt sure that the expedition 
would result in great benefits to the cause of science, and he was 
only sorry that M. Pavy had decided to return by the Atlantic 
instead of by the Pacific. 
[To show the diversity of opinion that exists in relation to 
this subject, we copy the following from the Proceedings of the 
Royal Geographical Society of April 22d, as given in ‘* Nature.”— 
Eps. | 
“On Recent Explorations of the North Polar Region, by Cap- 
tain Sherard Osborn, R. N. Captain Osborn commenced by allud- 
ing to his advocacy of a Polar Expedition via Smith Sound in 
1865, and stated that the Duke of Somerset, then First Lord of the 
Admiralty, though apparently sufficiently favorable to the general, 
proposal of a Government Expedition, urged upon him by a depu- 
Owing to the difference of opinion which then reigned with rega 
to the best route to be followed. The alternate route to Smith 
Sound was that by the seas of Spitzbergen, advocated b 
a 
(Captain Osborn) and the promoters of the Expedition were 
Content to wait the result of efforts made soon after by the Swedes 
and Germans to carry out the views of the German geographer. 
a 
Se ars h psed, w 
that the advocates of the Spitzbergen route had been proved 
ei Wrong, whilst those who believed Smith Sound to be the 
A winter in East Greenland, the most careful observation of these 
mighty masses of ice, their movements and formation, and of the 
le condition of temperature, have radically cured me, and all 
