Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 2 (1898).djvu/105

Rh the North Atlantic has been the most remarkable on record, and it happens that an unusual number of observers were present to report on its phenomenal absence which has characterized this very exceptional season. In my Notes for the year 1887, I mentioned that Capt. David Gray's experience led him to the conclusion that there is a certain periodicity in the movements of the ice in the Greenland Seas, the eastern or western limit of its margin reaching its maximum about every five years alternately; so that every tenth year may be expected to produce an "east-ice year," and vice versâ. The year 1881 was an "east-ice year," that is, the ice extended far to the eastward from the east coast of Greenland. Capt. Gray, in a communication published in the Proc. Roy. Geo. Soc. for 1881, p. 740, with map, recorded this remarkable eastward extension of the ice, and made some remarks with regard to its probable cause. The year 1886 was so far a "west-ice year," the ice being close packed on the east coast of Greenland (that is, on the west side of the Greenland Sea) that there was no hope of penetrating it in search of Whales; Capt. Gray therefore, ever willing to add exploration to his legitimate business when possible, attempted unsuccessfully to visit Franz Josef Land, but met with very little obstruction until he reached 36° 44' E. longitude, in the parallel of 75° (Dr. Robert Gray, Zool. 1887, p. 124). It was not till the next year (1887), however, that the ice receded to its farthest west. In 1891 there was again an enormous accumulation of ice off the east coast of Greenland, extending far away to the eastward. According to Capt. Gray's theory, therefore, the year 1897 should be a maximum "west-ice year," and such has been the case to a remarkable extent; where in 1881 Capt. Gray forced his way three hundred miles through floe-ice into the Spitzbergen land water, in the past season the Greenland whalers encountered no obstruction, and the 'Balæna' found no difficulty in passing round the south of Spitzbergen through the Barents Sea to Franz Josef Land, where she cruised amongst the islands of the archipelago, and hunted Walruses in lat. 81° N., accompanied by the 'Active' and the 'Diana.'

All the reports which we have from the eastern polar seas this season, and they have been unusually numerous, extending over a wide area—the Dundee whalers in the Greenland and