Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/347

Rh approximately the sixtieth to the sixty-third parallel of latitude), states that "the temperature of the water was 34°, of the air in the shade 45°, in the sun 77°, with a corresponding general warmth to the feelings of the crew." The highest reading of the thermometer for the month of January was noted by Kristensen to be 40° F., and the lowest, 27°; fifty-three years earlier (1842) Ross found for the same month 39° and 27·5°, with a mean of 32°, thus indicating an equality almost without fluctuation.

The fact that the high south has not yet been penetrated in the winter months leaves us in uncertainty as to the winter temperatures that may prevail there; but some indications of this temperature are to be found in the records which have been obtained in the circumantarctic tract. Ross registered the absolute minimum, for the year 1842, in the Falkland Islands to be only 19·2 (-5·7° R.); but still more significant is the reading of the minimum thermometer which was left by Foster in 1829 on Deception Island, and recovered by Captain W. H. Smiley (as reported by Wilkes) in 1842, or after an interval of thirteen years. The registry was found to be -5° F. (-16·45° R.). It is true that Deception Island lies well without the Antarctic Circle, and that its insular condition must measurablv reduce the rigors of a winter climate; but even these conditions permit us to form some just estimate of what "lies beyond," and of making some interesting comparisons with corresponding localities (so far as latitude is concerned) in the north. Thus, at Fort Reliance, in North America, the mercury descends to -70° F., and at Jakutsk, in Siberia, nearly one degree nearer to the equator, to -75°; and, if we are to fully believe the registry at Verkhojansk, for the winter of 1893, the unprecedentedly low temperature of -90° was reached. But one need not make comparisons with these especially cold localities, as it is well known that at the sites of the principal commercial cities of the world the mercury at times descends to from -5° to -15° (New York and Philadelphia, 1866, 1895). On January 23, 1823, the mercury in Berlin descended to -31° F., and in Paris, on January 25, 1795, to -21°. It is perhaps just to conclude from these and other facts that the extreme winter climate of the Austral Ocean, on or about latitude 63° south, is no more severe than that of southern France, and hardly more so than that of northern Italy. And while it is doubtless true that a considerably lower marking of the thermometer would be found in the much more extreme regions of the south, or nearer to the pole, it is practically certain that nothing comparable to the cold of the opposite face of the globe exists.

In summing up the various facts that have been noted, it may be admitted that they argue rather against than in favor of continental conditions, but they are by no means sufficient to make a