IX.] 
SUPER-COOLED MIST. 
451 
The plutonic rock, of which the hill was formed, was almost 
everywhere broken up by the action of the frost into angular 
blocks of stone, so that its surface was converted into an enor¬ 
mous stone mound. The stones were on the wind side covered 
with a translucent glassy ice-crust, which readily fell away, 
and added considerably to the difficulty of the ascent. I had 
previously observed the formation of such an ice-crust on the 
northernmost mountain summits of Spitzbergen.^ It arises 
undoubtedly from the fall of super-cooled mist, that is to say of 
mist whose vesicles have been cooled considerably below the 
freezing-point without being changed to ice, which first takes 
place when, after falling, they come in contact with ice or snow, 
or some angular hard object. It is such a mist that causes the 
icing down of the rigging of vessels, a very unpleasant phenome¬ 
non for the navigator, which we experienced during the following 
days, when the tackling of the Vega was covered with pieces of 
ice so large, and layers so thick, that accidents might have 
happened by the falling of the ice on the deck.^ 
The dredgings here yielded to Dr. Kjoilman some algse, and 
to Dr. Stuxberg masses of a species of cumacea, Diastylis 
Batlikei Kr., of Acantlwste^pliia Malmgreni Goes, and Lijparis 
gelatinosusVdi\\di^,hut little else. On the steep slopes of the 
^ Cf. Redogorelse for den svensha polarexpeditionen dr 1872-73 (Bihang 
till Vet. Ak. handl. Bd. 2, No. 18, p. 91). 
2 A more dangerous kind of icing down threatens the navigator in severe 
weather not only in the Polar Seas but also in the Baltic and the North Sea. 
For it happens at that season that the sea-water at the surface is over¬ 
cooled, that is, cooled below the freezing-point without being frozen. 
Every wave which strikes the vessel is then converted by the concussion 
into ice-sludge, which increases and freezes together to hard ice so speedily 
that all attempts to remove it from the deck are in vain. In a few hours 
the vessel may be changed into an unmanageable floating block of ice 
which the sailors, exhausted by hard labour, must in despair abandon to its 
fate. Such an icing down, though with a fortunate issue, befell the steamer 
Sofia in the month of October off Bear Island, during the Swedish Polar 
Expedition of 1868. 
G G 2 
