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PREFACE. 



we are affected in our modes of living, in our spheres of action, and even in 

 our habits of thought, by the variations and extremes of temperature. The 

 practical value of the climatic explorations which have been made can hardly 

 be overestimated, and nothing has added so much to the world's knowledge 

 of itself as what has been accomplished in this department of investigation. 

 The long roll of those whose lives have been devoted to science and scientific 

 work contains no names more entitled to honorable and grateful mention than 

 those who have unlocked the mysteries of the Polar and Tropical Worlds, 

 and have thus brought within the reach of every one facts which have a prac- 

 tical bearing upon everyday life as well as upon scientific studies. The group- 

 ing together of these investigations, from the discovery of Iceland a thousand 

 years ago to the present time, presents an array of facts and observations of 

 thrilling interest as well as vital value, and the pages of this work will be 

 found to be replete with attraction no less than instruction. Baffin, Parry, 

 Eoss, Franklin, Kane, Hayes and Hall — fiction records no stronger experiences 

 than were theirs in exploring the Polar World, and science has had no more 

 faithful devotees than they. With almost the minuteness of preconcerted 

 design, each of these men has supplemented the work of those who have pre- 

 ceded him, until in the summary of their successive voyages, given here, we 

 have the whole story of life and its conditions in the regions of the lower tem- 

 peratures. Turning from the Polar to the Tropical World, we find men who 

 have braved equatorial suns as well as Arctic snows to examine and define the 

 relations between excessive heat and vegetable, animal and social life. Agassiz 

 and Squier in South America, and Wallace, Burton, Speke and Livingstone 

 upon the eastern continent, have each and all made iiiivaluable contributions to 

 our knowledge of tropical regions ; and whatever may be accomplished by 

 future explorers, it is hardly possible that the secret mysteries of the Polar and 

 Tropical Worlds will ever be more thoroughly revealed to us than by Captain 

 Hall and Dr. Livingstone, whose recent sad and tragic fates, as martyrs to 

 their chosen life-work, will never cease to be recalled with tender interest. No 

 men in this generation have done more for science and for the world than they, 

 and there are really no loftier places in the Temple of Fame than are occupied 

 by the names and deeds of the guild of climatic explorers, whose experiences 

 and discoveries are outlined and summarized in this work. 



