ABSENCE OF ICEBERGS. 
421 
IX J 
that of the air on the vessel between + l°’o and + 1°*8. Although 
thus both the air and the water had a temperature somewhat 
above the freezing-point, ice was seen to form on the calm, 
mirror-bright surface of the sea. This ice consisted partly of 
needles, partly of a thin sheet. I have previously on several 
occasions observed in the Arctic seas a similar phenomenon, 
that is to say, have observed the formation of ice when the 
temperature of the air was above the freezing-point. On this 
occasion, when the temperature of the uppermost stratum of 
water was also above the freezing-point, the formation of ice 
was clearly a sort of hoar-frost phenomenon, caused by radiation 
of heat, perhaps both upwards towards the atmosphere and 
downwards towards the bottom layer of water, cooled below 
the freezing-point. 
The whole day we continued our voyage eastwards with 
glorious weather over a smooth ice-free sea, and in the same 
way on the 1st September, with a gentle southerly wind, the 
temperature of the air at noon in the shade being -f 5°'6. On 
the night before the 2nd September the wind became northerly 
and the temperature of the air sank to — 1°. Little land was 
seen, though we were still not very far from the coast. Near to 
it there was a broad ice-free, or nearly ice-free, channel, but 
farther out to sea ice commenced. The following night snow 
fell, so that the whole of the deck and the Bear Islands, which 
we reached on the 3rd September, were sprinkled with it. 
Hitherto, during the whole time we sailed along the coast, we 
had scarcely met with any fields of drift-ice but such as were 
formed of rotten, even, thin and scattered pieces of ice, in many 
places almost converted into ice-sludge, wdthout an ice-foot ” 
and often dirty on the surface. No iceberg had been seen, nor 
any large glacier ice-blocks, such as on the coasts of Spitzbergen 
replace the Greenland icebergs. But east of Svjatoinos the ice 
began to increase in size and assume the same appearance as 
the ice north of Spitzbergen. It was here, besides, less dirty, and 
