] .808.] Nordenskiold on the Swedish Arctic Explorations of 1868. 131 



favourable season, i. e. the time before the formation of new ice, no 

 vessel had as yet made such an attempt. This was the aim of the Swedish 

 Expedition, and it found — 



(1) That the polar sea is far more open in the autumn than at any other 

 season of the year, but that even then the passage is soon stopped by dense 

 and impenetrable masses of broken ice. 



(2) That during the winter the polar basin is covered by an unbroken 

 ice, and that the freezing of the surface begins as early as the end of Sep- 

 tember. From September 23 to October 12 we had almost every day, 

 either with the steamer or with boats, to cross new-formed ice. 



(3) That an autumn cruise north of 80|° lat. is attended with unusual 

 dangers, owing to the darkness and storms then prevailing, no ships being 

 able a long time to sustain a night storm among large rolling pieces of ice 

 and a cold of — 1 5° Cent. If the ship has the good luck not to be more or 

 less damaged by the constant unavoidable encounters with the ice mounts, 

 it will soon by the immediate freezing of the washing waves be itself quite 

 covered and pressed down by ice. 



(4) The idea of an open and comparatively milder polar basin is quite 

 chimerical ; on the contrary, 20—30' north of Spitzbergen a region of 

 cold seems to begin which no doubt stretches far around the pole. 



(5) The only plan to attain the pole, from which success can be expected, 

 is that adopted by most English arctic men, namely of going northward by 

 sledges in the winter either from Smith Sound or Seven Islands. 



I remain, Sir, 



Your obedient humble Servant, 



A. E. Nordenskiold. 



P.S. As soon as the magnetical observations of Dr. Lemstrom shall be 

 duly worked out I will send you a copy of them. 



Should you think it worth communicating this letter to the Royal 

 Geographical Society, I beg you especially to inform its celebrated President, 

 Sir R. Murchison, that besides other specimens interesting in a geological 

 point of view (for instance, a mass of Miocene and coal plants, bones of 

 Ichthyosaurus 1 &c), we found a number of large fish fragments, probably 

 belonging to the Devonian age, in the red slate of Liebde Bay, constituting 

 the overmost layer of what I in my * Geology of Spitzbergen ' called 

 Hecla block- formation. Accordingly Sir Roderick probably is right in sup- 

 posing that the deeper layers of this " formation " belong to the Silurian 

 age. The underlying crystalline plates are evidently Laurentian. 



II. The reading of Mr. Lockyer's Paper, " Spectroscopic Observation 

 of the Sun, No. II./' was resumed and concluded. 



(Abstract.) 



The author, after referring to his ineffectual attempts since 1866 to ob- 

 serve the spectrum of the prominences with an instrument of small (lis- 



