parties are well supplied with heavy furs and sufficient quantities of carbonaceous food. The scurvy, hitherto often a great scourge to the crews of vessels wintering in the Arctic regions, can, with proper precaution, be resisted, and in this opinion I am sustained by the united testimony of the surgeons of Her Majesty's Arctic squadron. The disease has been of very rare occurrence of late years, and wherever it has appeared, it has been owing to accidental causes, but chiefly from the long continued use of a salt meat diet; either in consequence of the parties never having been provided with any other standard supplies of food, or of their having so long remained in the field as to have consumed their fresh stores. Indeed, I am convinced that the climate is one of unusual healthfulness. The suffering from the disease among Dr. Kane's crew was mainly owing to the above-mentioned cause. He started too early to profit fully by the discoveries which have been made in the art of preserving fresh meats and vegetables, and with the exception of a limited quantity of pemmican - intended for use in the field — he had to depend upon the ordinary navy ration, without change or variation. Casual supplies of fresh food were obtained by the hunt or in barter with the natives, and when procured, invariably enabled his men to resist the disease, or, if developed, it acted as an immediate and specific cure. The difficulty experienced in keeping alive his dogs was chiefly owing to the absence of a diet suited to their necessities. The salt of the meat acted injuriously upon them, and the insufficient quantities which they could eat, did not enable them successfully to resist the cold, and a strange epilepto-tetanoidal disease was in consequence developed among them. The same was observable among his crew, and doubtless for the same reason.

I have thus, as briefly as possible, given the reasons for believing in the existence of an open Polar Sea, and that through it the North Pole may be reached. Experience has reduced the scheme to a mere question of time. If not accomplished at this, it will be at no very distant day.

I have already announced to you my intention of laboring for the accomplishment of this object, and to this end I would respectfully solicit the counsel and sympathy of the Association. In this presence it would be useless to enumerate the results to science to be anticipated from its success. Some of them may, however, with propriety be briefly alluded to.

Under all circumstances, valuable additions would be made to our knowledge of Arctic climatology, and I should hope to determine something definite with regard to the condition, during the winter, of the waters beyond latitude 82°, and thus definitely settle the question, as to the permanent existence of the open Polar Sea, by passing a part of that season as far north upon the shores of Grinnell Land as possible. After entering winter harbor, and upon the earliest freezing, I should establish a depot of provisions in that direction, and with one companion and a team of dogs, would there pass the months of December, January, and February, in a snow-house. The land ice could be travelled during the moonlight period of each month, and observations made upon the situation and temperature of open water. Such a plan of operations is, under ordinary circumstances, quite practicable. That the months of September and October are available for the purpose of establishing provision depots, has been proven by my bold, daring, hardy co-laborer in the late expedition, Mr. Bonsall. That the winter may be passed in the manner above described, is shown by the experience of the enterprising and indefatigable chief factor Rae, who, as you are aware, passed the winter preceding his famous journey upon which he found the relics of Franklin's party, in snow-huts at Repulse Bay, and as he assures me, without any serious inconvenience from the cold, and without disease. To the experience of Dr. Rae I will add my own. During the autumn of 1854, while on duty connected with the safe retreat of the late expedition to the south, from Rensselaer Harbor, I passed in a similar manner with seven others of the ship's company the months of October, November, and part of December, and performed a return journey of three hundred miles, in eight days, with the dog sledges of the Esquimaux, guided only by the light of the moon and the stars. We lived during this period entirely without fire for purposes of warmth, and but for a want of food could have passed the winter in safety. The temperature of the hut sank rarely to zero, and was often as high as the freezing point, being kept thus elevated by the heat radiated from the persons of the occupants.

I have already shown the importance of these northern lands as offering positions for observations upon the human and floral life of the region; and lying almost in a direct line between the two great magnetic centres, the great value of stations in the high latitudes of Grinnell Land for magnetic determination can hardly be overesti

mated. Our knowledge of the oceanic currents and tides of the extensive waters of the Polar Basin is enveloped in the same mystery which invests the regions of their birth and flow, and as the proposed line of descent runs midway between the seat of Atlantic and Pacific influences, it presents a most important field for the completion of the hydrographic survey of the northern hemisphere. Indeed, there is no department of physical science or natural history to which the expedition could not be made to contribute.

The collections of natural history made during the cruise of the "Advance," which were unfortunately abandoned with the vessel, exhibited a hitherto unknown feature in Greenland zoölogy, containing as they did a number of skulls of the musk ox (Ovibos moschatus), found in almost every locality visited between latitudes 78° and 79°, by Dr. Kane, Mr. Goodfellow, and other members of the party on the coast, and discovered by Mr. Wilson and myself near the base of the Great Glacier, about eighty miles eastward from Rensselaer Harbor, on the parallel 78° 40′. These animals seem to have become extinct on the continent of Greenland to the south of latitude 80°, but I have been assured by the Esquimaux that they still exist to the far north, and they speak of a large island in that direction, upon which they live in great numbers.

The northern range of the Cetacea is not known, and it would be highly important to determine whether they inhabit the extreme northern limit of our planet. I conjecture that their central habitat is about the pole. Whales struck in the Greenland Sea near Spitzbergen have been caught to the southward of Behring Strait, recognized as the same animals by the harpoons remaining imbedded in their flesh, thus proving conclusively, that both from the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans they have free communication with the regions of extreme northness. These animals cannot live in an ice-covered sea. The once valuable fishing grounds of the Greenland Sea and Baffin's Bay are now almost unproductive, and the right whale (Balena Mysticetus) is fast disappearing from the "north-west coast." It would be interesting to determine whether they have been destroyed, or driven within their ice-locked fortress. This last I think highly probable; and it would seem to be shown by a fact, stated by Dr. Kane in a paper read before the American Geographical and Statistical Society in December, 1852, upon "Access to an Open Polar Sea:" namely,

that he observed the white whale (Delphinapterus Beluga) passing up Wellington Channel, northward, through a broken sea of ice for four days in October. The barbed seal (Phoca barbata) was seen by Morton sporting in the waters of Kennedy Channel. These animals must have been denizens of the north, for since this species is not endowed with mechanical powers for opening breathing places in the ice, they could not have reached this water from the south, for this would have required them to pass underneath an unbroken belt of ice more than one hundred miles in width, which, I need hardly say, would be impossible. In its proper place I might have cited this fact, as well as the capturing by Morton and Hans of two polar bears (Ursus maritimus) near the same spot, as bearing strongly upon the existence of continual open water.

The lower forms of marine life have not been studied, and present a broad field for the investigations of the naturalist. Important problems are involved in the determination of their geographical distribution.

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The great glacial system of Greenland has been subject to but little enlightened investigation. Giesecke thought this vast ice continent, as I shall venture to call it which is the birthplace of the untold millions of tons of annual berg-discharge which come down from the north into the Atlantic was a great congeries of islands, cemented together by ice. This continent, as it now appears, has a superficial area exceeding half a million of square miles, and it is the seat of constant atmospheric precipitation. The excess of this precipitation over evaporation for evaporation, I may mention, takes place continually and discharge by the river and icebergs, have an important bearing upon the physical geography and climatology of the region, and, indeed, of the whole northern hemisphere. Many of the geological phenomena of the ancient glacial period can at this time be witnessed almost everywhere on the Greenland coast.

The river system of Greenland, fed by the Mer de Glace, is greater than is generally supposed; large streams were discovered by Dr. Kane above latitude 78°. The great glacier of Humboldt, which bounds Smith's Strait to the north-east by a wall of ice sixty miles in length, and from fifty to five hundred feet in perpendicular altitude, is but a great frozen river (if I may so use the term) slowly flowing seaward, and discharging, piece by piece, its congealed fresh water into

the salt sea, and rafting millions of tons of detritus (boulders and sand) to more southern latitudes.

Upon all these points the portfolios of Dr. Kane will be found rich in materials; and, when presented to the world, they will, I am sure, give no cause to the distinguished Superintendent of the Coast Survey to regret the words of just and generous praise which I had the gratification to hear bestowed by him, the other day, upon this highly gifted man, for whose untimely death the world now mourns. But his facilities and opportunities were limited, and much remains to be accomplished.

I need not pursue the subject further, and have already detained the Association longer, perhaps, than the occasion warrants. The deep interest which I feel in a field of investigation which has long engaged my attention must serve as my apology.

II. PHYSIOLOGY.

1. NOTICE ON TWO HUMAN CESTOIDEA, NEW TO SCIENCE. D. F. WEINLAND, of Cambridge, Mass.

By

DURING my researches regarding the Helminthes or Entozoa of man, I have met with two interesting forms of Cestoids, which are new to science.

The specimens are preserved in the collection of the Boston Society for Medical Improvement, and have been kindly communicated to me by Dr. J. B. S. Jackson for further investigation.

I. Cysticercus acanthotrias, WEINLAND.

In Prof. J. B. S. Jackson's catalogue of the collection named above, we read under No. 904: "A Cysticercus cellulosæ, from a woman about fifty years of age, who died of phthisis, a dissecting-room subject at Richmond, Va. About a dozen or fifteen of the cystes were found in the cellular membrane of the muscles and in the integuments, besides one which hung free from the inner surface of the dura mater near the