PROCEEDINGS 
OF 
THE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY 
OF LONDON. 
SESSION 1858. 
Tenth Meeting , Monday , April 12th , 1858. 
Sir RODERICK I. MURCHISON, President, in the Chair. 
Presentations. — The Rev. J. W. Hammond , and T. Fowell Buxton , 
L. P. Casella , and Robert M‘ Kerr ell, Esqrs., were presented upon their 
election. 
Elections. — Dr. Adolphus Bernays ; Sir Robert Peel , Bart., m.p. ; 
Dr. John Shea , r.n. ; Viscount Strangford ; the Right Hon. John Wynne , 
m.p. ; and John Francis Champion ; Charles Hutton Gregory , c.E. ; Morrell 
Dorrington Longden ; and George William Wheatley , Esqrs. ; were elected 
Fellows. 
The Paper read was : — 
On the supposed Discovery of the North Coast of Greenland and an 
Open Polar Sea; the great “ Humboldt Glacier ,” and other matters 
relating to the formation of Ice in Greenland, as described in ‘ Arctic 
Explorations in the lears 1853-4-5, by Elisha Kent Kane, u.s.n. 
Philadelphia, 1856.’ By Dr. Henry Rink, m.d., of Copenhagen. 
It will he recollected that Dr. Kane attempted to take his ship 
farther to the northward on the track discovered by Captain Ingle- 
field the preceding year ; that he did so, to a short distance ; that 
he was frozen in and lost his ship, and finally saved himself and 
party by returning in sledges to Uppernavik. During his two 
years’ stay in Smith Sound, he made various sledge excursions ; and 
his discoveries, when engaged in these, must be regarded as the 
chief profit of the expedition. These discoveries are, 1st, The 
great Humboldt Glacier, which he describes in most eloquent terms, 
as the glacial outpouring of that vast ice-field, little less in extent 
than the whole of Australia, which forms the interior of Greenland ; 
and, 2ndly, The north coast of Greenland and the Polar Sea, which 
washes its shores, and which is kept open by the Gulf Stream. As 
to the first point, Dr. Rink denies the existence of any evidence by 
which we can speculate on the nature of the interior of Greenland ; 
it may consist of mountain chains, which protrude through the ice, 
VOL. II. R 
