SUMMARY. 
379 
westerly winds. We made in the thirty-one days of 
May one hundred and ninety odd miles to the south- 
ward and eastward. 
For the last four days of the month we were at the 
margin of the Arctic circle, alternating within and 
without it. We passed to the south of it on the 30th, 
to recross it on the 31st with an accidental drift to the 
northward. We were experiencing at this time the 
rapid transition of seasons which characterizes this cli- 
mate. The mean of the preceding month, April, had 
been +7° 96''; that of May was 20° 22^ — a difl'erence 
of nearly twelve degrees. At the same time, there was 
a chilliness about the weather, an uncomfortable raw- 
ness, both in April and May, which we had not known 
under the deep, perpetual frosts of winter. Cold there 
seemed a tangible, palpable something, which we could 
guard against or control by clothing and exercise ; 
while warmth, as an opposite condition, was realiza- 
ble and apparent. But here, in temperatures which 
at some hours were really oppressing, 60° to 80° in 
the sun, and with a Polar altitude of 45°, one half the 
equatorial maximum, we had the anomaly of absolute 
discomfort from cold. I know that hygrometric con- 
ditions and extreme daily fluctuations of the thermom- 
eter explain much of this ; but it was impossible for 
me to avoid thinking at the time that there must also 
he a physiological cause more powerful than either. 
I have alluded in my journal to the return of the 
birds. They were most welcome visitors. Crowds of 
little snow-birds [Embyriza and Plectrophanes), with 
white breasts and jetty coverts, were attracted by the 
garbage which the thaw had reproduced around us, 
and twittered from pile to pile, chirping sweet music 
over their unexpected store-house. Some of the larger 
