The record-union. [volume] (Sacramento, Calif.) 1891-1903, 1895-11-09

polar bears, blue foxes and jennings
prefer to stay and abide for six months
in this circumpolar city of dreadful
night"
The nature of this polar night, of the
cold it brings and it's effect upon ami
mails, may be gathered from Colone
Fielden's notes made during the winter
passed by H. NJ S. Alert on Grinnel
Land in 1S75-16, at a point nearer the
actual pole than has been reached be-
fore or since. The sun sank on October
18th, and did not reappear til March "a
"a night of only twenty days less than
its calculated disappearance at the act
uaI pole. Yet it is certain that this pro-
tracted night was never dark in the
sense that it is dark inside the galleries
of a coal pit The Arctic animals, unlike
the deep-sea creatures need to develop
no light organs to illuminate their path
though they live only in darkness Wis
ible"
ION November Both, ." writes Colonel
Fielden, with a perfectly clear sky
from a distance of half a mile in q
southerly direction, the ship was visible
from II a. m. to / p. NJ. At noon, just
topping the eastern hills, was
a family tinted nearly greer
sky, through which stars OF
the first magnitude had a difficulty
in shining. On January 24th the tWi-
light at noon had increased sufficiently
to enable us to distinguish comrade at
a distance of 100 yards. BY the begin
ming of February, a month before the
temperance of the sun, we were able
to take walks of considerable extent
and by the middle of that month We
were carrying our guns in pursuit OF
game" In addition, moonlight and
starlight were brilliant. and enabled
them to cross the country almost
throughout the winter.
This account somewhat dispels the
thickness of that Cimmerian darkness
in which tradition wraps the polar
night. But at best it is bad enough
Men. even Arctic vOyagers, feel its
gloom intolerable, though cheered by ar
tificial light. Strange to say, the ami
mails do not so far as we can tell. ThelI
eyes are not modified by the prevailing
darkness, either in the direction OF
greater power or by degeneration
through which the shallow water forms
which have invaded the deep seas have
become blind At the same time Mr.
Battye has noted, and satisfied himself
by repeated experiments, that the FAC
ulty of sight is inferior in the Arctic
fox and Arctic hare to that of the com
mon fox and common hare of Britain
The nervous depression" with which
darkness affects men Is quite absent IT
the case of animals in the Arctic nights
Their vital activity is unaffected by the
absence of sunlight, which, though pro
tracted for SO great a time, seems nc
more irkSOme than it does to those ami
mails which have by choice become noe
turnal in their habits in temperate
lands. Their Indifference to cold is still
more astonishing. The Arctic animals
do not even hibernate. The polar beal
does not initiate the winter sleep of the
black and brown bears, but is a rover
through the winter and is hunted ant
killed by moonlight: and Mr.. Battyt
found on Kolguey the traps and half
frozen bats of seal fat which had beer
set for blue foxes in the previous winter
The Samoyeds also urged him to stay
through the winter saying that there
would be plenty Of hunting. More