cers entered fully into the spirit of these ainusements, which took place once a month, alternately on board each ship, no instance occurred of any thing that could interfere with the regular discipline, or at all weaken the respect of the men towards their superiors. Ours were masquerades without licentiousness carnivals without excess.' -Parry's Journal, pp. 49, 50. An occupation not less assiduously pursued, and of much more important and permanent benefit to those engaged in it, was the re-establishment of schools. A great number of important observations on the magnetic influence were conducted by lieutenant Foster, which have appeared in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. In treating of Professor Barlow's plate for correct ing the effect of local attraction, and the severe trial it had to undergo in latitudes where the compasses had before been rendered wholly useless, captain Parry says, never had an invention a more complete and satisfactory triumph; for to the last moment of our operations at sea did the compass indicate the true magnetic direction.' Such an invention,' he adds, as this, so sound in principle, so easy of application, and so universally beneficial in practice, needs no testimony of mine to establish its merits; but, when I consider the many anxious days and sleepless nights which the uselessness of the compass in these seas has formerly occasioned me, I really should esteem it a kind of personal ingratitude to Mr. Barlow, as well as great injustice to so memorable a discovery, not to have stated my opinion of its merits, under circumstances so well calculated to put them to a satisfactory trial.'-pp. 55, 56. On the 20th of July the disruption of the ice first allowed the ships to remove from their winter quarters, and enabled them to stretch across towards the western shore of Prince Regent's Inlet, where, after some slight obstruction, they succeeded in making progress along the land. This, however, did not continue long; the ice was perceived to approach the land, till at length it reached the ships and drove them both on shore, and the Fury was found to be so very seriously damaged as to make it impossible for her to proceed farther without repairs. It was now therefore necessary to form a sort of basin by means of the ice; the process was tedious and laborious, and various impediments occurred from the movement and pressure of the ice. They succeeded, however, after immense exertions, in heaving the Fury down; but this had scarcely been accomplished when a gale of wind destroyed the securities of the basin, which rendered it necessary to tow her out, to re-equip the Hecla, and for the latter to stand out to sea. The Fury was once more driven on shore, and it now appeared on a close examination, that it was perfectly hopeless, circumstanced as they were, to make her sea-worthy; that it was absolutely necessary to abandon her. The officers and men,' says captain Parry, were now lite rally so harassed and fatigued as to be scarcely capable of further exertion without some rest; and on this, and one or two other occasions, I noticed more than a single instance of stupor amounting to a certain degree of failure in intel lect, rendering the individual so affected quite unable at first to comprehend the meaning of an order, though still as willing as ever to obey it! Captain Parry afterwards says:-With a twelvemonth's provisions for both ships' companies, it would have been folly to hope for final success, considering the small progress we had already made, the uncertain nature of the navigation, and the advanced period of the present season. I was therefore reduced to the only remaining conclusion, that it was my duty, under all the circumstances of the case, to return to England, in compliance with the plain tenor of my instructions.' This, therefore, was the least successful of all the brave and skilful efforts of captain Parry. We can but very briefly advert to his late at tempts to reach the Pole.' The object of this expedition was to reach the North Pole by means of two sledge-boats, so constructed as either to travel over the ice, or sail or row through spaces of open water. The Hecla was again appointed to carry him and his companions to Spitzbergen, and there to wait in harbour for his return. The vessel left the Nore on the 4th of April, reached Hammerfest on the 18th, and on the 27th, having received on board a number of rein-deer, made sail to the northward. On the 14th of May the Hecla was abreast of Hakluyt's Headland, when she was obliged to run into the main-ice for security in a heavy gale of wind. She remained beset and drifting about with the ice, chiefly to the eastward, for four-and-twenty days, when, on the 8th of June, she was liberated. During this detention the weather was delightful: ⚫ I never remember,' says captain Parry, to have expe rienced in these regions such a continuance of beautiful weather as we now had, during more than three weeks that we had been on the northern coast of Spitzbergen.' Twice he thought of here leaving the Hecla, and taking to the boats, but her safety, in such a sea, thus left with fewer than half her working hands, could not be reckoned upon for an hour; besides, he could not have known when or where to meet with her on his return. 'The nature of the ice,' he tells us. was beyond all comparison the most unfavor able for our purpose that I ever remember to have seen. The men compared it to a stonemason's yard, which, except that the stones (masses) were of ten times the usual dimensions, it, indeed, very much resembled.' On reaching the Seven Islands they were found to be all shut in by land-ice; but the party deposited on Walden Island a store of provisions for their return. Captain Parry then stood on to the northward among loose and broken ice, in search of the main body, as far as 81° 5' 32"; but, not finding any thing like a field of ice, he stood back to the southward, and on the 19th of June discovered a bay on the north coast of Spitzbergen, in which the Hecha was anchored in lat. 79° 55′ N., long. 16° 54′ E It is named in the Dutch charts Treurenberg Bay. Captain Parry on the 21st of June set out on his perilous undertaking, with two boats named the Enterprize and Endeavour; Mr. Beverly, the surgeon, being attached to his own:— 'Our plan of travelling,' he says, 'being nearly the same throughout this excursion, after we first entered upon the ice, I may at once give some account of our usual mode of proceeding. It was my intention to travel wholly at night, and to rest by day, there being, of course, constant daylight in these regions during the summer season. The advantages of this plan, which was occasionally deranged by circumstances, consisted, first, in our avoiding the intense and oppressive glare from the snow during the time of the sun's greatest altitude, so as to prevent, in some degree, the painful inflammation in the eyes, called 'snow-blindness,' which is common in all snowy countries. We also thus enjoyed greater warmth during the hours of rest, and had a better chance of drying our clothes; besides which, no small advantage was derived from the snow being harder at night for travelling. The only disadvantage of this plan was, that the fogs were somewhat more frequent and more thick by night than by day, though even in this respect there was less difference than might have been supposed, the temperature during the twentyfour hours undergoing but little variation. This travelling by night and sleeping by day so completely inverted the natural order of things, that it was difficult to persuade ourselves of the reality. Even the officers and myself, who were all furnished with pocket chronometers, could not always bear in mind at what part of the twenty-four hours we had arrived; and there were several of the men who declared, and I believe truly, that they never knew night from day during the whole excursion. When we rose in the evening, we commenced our day by prayers, after which we took off our fur sleeping-dresses, and put on those for travelling; the former being made of camlet, lined with racoon-skin, and the latter of strong blue box-cloth. We made a point of always putting on the same stockings and boots for travelling in, whether they had dried during the day or not; and I believe it was only in five or six instances, at the most, that they were not either still wet or hard frozen. This indeed was of no consequence, beyond the discomfort of first putting them on in this state, as they were sure to be thoroughly wet in a quarter of an hour after commencing our journey; while, on the otner hand, it was of vital importance to keep dry things for sleeping in. Being rigged' for travelling, we breakfasted upon warm cocoa and biscuit, and after stowing the things in the boats and on the sledges, so as to secure them, as much as possible, from wet, we set off on our day's journey, and usually travelled from five to five and a half hours, then stopped an hour to dine, and again travelled four, five, or even six hours, according to circumstances. After this we halted for the night, as we called it, though it was usually early in the morning, selecting the largest surface of ice we happened to be near, for hauling the boats on, in order to avoid the danger of its breaking up by coming in contact with other masses, and also to prevent drift as much as possible. The boats were placed close alongside each other, with their sterns to the wind, the snow or wet cleared out of them, and the sails, supported by the bamboo masts and Our allowance of provisions for each man powder Rum . 10 ounces. 1 do. to make one pin. 1 gill. 3 ounces per week. ur fuel consisted entirely of spirits of wine, of which two pints formed our daily allowance, the cocoa being cooked in an iron boiler over a shallow iron lamp, with seven wicks; a simple apparatus, which answered our purpose remarkably well. We usually found one pint of the spirits of wine sufficient for preparing our breakfast, that is, for heating twenty-eight pints of water, though it always commenced from the temperature of 32°. If the weather was calm and fair, this quantity of fuel brought it to the boiling point in about an hour and a quarter; but more generally the wicks began to go out before it had reached 200°. This, however, made a very comfortable meal to persons situated as we were. Such, with very little variation, was our regular routine during the whole of this excursion.'-P. 55-59. On the 20th of July captain Parry says:— We halted at seven A. M., having, by our reckoning, accomplished six miles and a half in a N. N.W. direction, the distance traversed being ten miles and an half. It may, therefore, be imagined how great was our mortification in finding that our latitude, by observation at noon, was only 82° 36′52′′, being less than five miles to the northward of our place at noon on the 17th, since which time we had certainly travelled twelve in that direction.'-P. 94. This circumstance was carefully concealed from the men; and on the 22d they had the satisfaction of observing that the ice had certainly improved; though the floes had not extended their surfaces so as to entitle them to be called 'fields.' In proportion, then, to the hopes we had begun to entertain, was our disappointment in finding, at noon, that we were in lat. 82° 43′ 5′′, or not quite four miles to the northward of yesterday's observation, instead of the ten or eleven which we had travelled! However, we determined to continue to the last our utmost exertions, though we could never once encourage the men by assuring them of our making good progress, and, setting out at seven in the evening, soon found that our hope of having permanently reached better ice was not to be realised; for the floe on which we slept was so full of hummocks that it occupied us just six hours to cross it, the distance in a straight line not exceeding two miles and a half.-P. 98, 99. 6 This laborious work was disheartening enough to the officers, who knew to what little effect they had been struggling, which, however, the men did not, though,' says Parry, they often laughingly remarked that we were a long time getting to this 83°!' At last it became-we may say it had for some time become-hopeless to pursue the journey. For the last few days, the eighty-third parallel was the limit to which we had ventured to extend our hopes; but even this expectation had become considerably weakened since the setting in of the last northerly wind, which continued to drive us to the southward, during the necessary hours of rest, nearly as much as we could gain by eleven or twelve hours of daily labor. Had our success been at all proportionate to our exertions, it was my full intention to have proceeded a few days beyond the middle of the period for which we were provided, trusting to the resources we expected to find at Table Island. But this was so far from being the case that I could not but consider it as incurring useless fatigue to the officers and men, and unnecessary wear and tear for the boats, to persevere any longer in the attempt. I determined, therefore, on giving the people one entire day's rest, which they very much needed, and time to wash and mend their clothes, while the officers were occupied in making all the observations which might be interesting in this latitude; and then to set out on our return on the following day. Having communicated my intentions to the people, who were all much disappointed in finding how little their labors had effected, we set about our respective occupations, and were much favored by a remarkably fine day. P. 102-104. The highest point of latitude that was reached captain Parry considers to be 82° 45', on the meridian of 19° 25′ east of Greenwich. SOUTH POLAR REGIONS.-From the period of captain Cook's voyages, the South Polar Ocean has been little regarded as a point of interest in geography, and in no considerable degree explored. He penetrated beyond the Antarctic circle, in long. 39° 30′ E., advancing to lat. 67° 30', and met with fields and detached pieces of ice, in long. 101° and 110° W., between which he proceeded to lat. 71° 10′ S., the nearest approach made by him towards the South Pole, fields and mountains of ice being here scattered over the surface of the sea; and in long. 136° and 148° W., between which he descended to lat. 68°. Captain Cook discovered no land in these regions beyond Sandwich land in lat. 60°. But the Russians, in a recent voyage of discovery, are said to have fallen in with several islands about the seventieth parallel; they also circumnavigated the Sandwich Land, which was left undetermined by Cook, and conjectured that it might be a part of a great southern continent. The only detailed account of discoveries in this region which we have to add is from a paper of some length in the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, relative to the discovery of what has been called New South Shetland. This is said to have been first seen, at least in modern times, by Mr. William Smith, master of the brig Wil liams of Blythe, trading from Buenos Ayres to Valparaiso. Fancying that the passage round Cape Horn might be weathered better by preserving a more than usual southerly course, and being on the 19th of February, 1819, in lat. 62° 40 S., and long. 60° W., he imagined he saw land at the distance of two leagues. Next day (Fe bruary 20th), he stood in for his supposed land; at noon his lat. by observation was 62° 17 S, long. 60° 12′ W., by an excellent chronometer; the weather was moderate and the atmosphere clear. So fine was it, that he could not mistake the appearance. Fearing the return of blowing weather, he was deterred from approaching nearer, and being principal owner of the brigh was unwilling to endanger his policy of insur ance, in case of meeting with any accident. He observed, however, to the westward more land, which he approached to the distance of tea miles; this, as well as the former, appearing t be an island, and the coast bare and rocky: be observed great abundance of whales and seals. On his arrival at Valparaiso, he related every thing that he had seen to the English there, whe at first ridiculed the account: but he had a second opportunity of visiting this spot, in October 1819. He now discovered the same land, bearing south-east by east, three leagues. The weather was hazy; he bore up for it, and approached within four miles, when he proved it to be an island, or rather a large barren rock, inhabited only by innumerable penguins; he sounded, and in forty fathoms found a botten of fine black sand; he hauled in till it bore east by south; having sounded when in sixty fathoms, he procured the same bottom. During the night he hauled off for security to the northward, but at day-light next morning he again stood in for the island; he could now distinguish it perfectly at the distance of three leagues; he sounded in ninety-five fathoms and brought up fine sand and ooze. At 8 A. M., the weather being very clear, he could plainly distinguish the mainland, bearing S. S. E., the island being distant from it about three leagues. The mainland presented itself as a cape, to which the coast tended in a north-east direction, he stood in, and ran along the land as far as the point to which he gave the name of North Foreland, obtaining all the way regular soundings of sand and gravel, lessening gradually from thirty-five to twenty fathoms. He now hauled in for the cape, and proceeded, within three leagues, more easterly; the island now bearing north-west, distance seven leagues, and, observing the appearance of a good harbour, he sent a boat's crew and his first mate on shore, where they planted a board with the Union-jack, and an appropriate inscription, with three cheers, taking possession in the name of the king of Great POLARITY, the quality of a thing considered as having poles, or a tendency to turn itself into one certain posture; but chiefly used in speaking of the magnet. See MAGNETISM. POLARISATION OF LIGHT. If a ray of light fall upon one of the surfaces of a rhomboid of Iceland crystal, and is transmitted through the opposite surface, it is separated into two pencils, one of which proceeds in the direction of the incident ray, while the other forms with it an acute angle of between 6° and 7°. The first of these pencils is said to experience the usual or ordinary refraction, and the other the unusual or extraordinary refraction. If the luminous object from which the ray proceeds be looked at through the crystal, two images will be distinctly seen, even when the rhomboid is turned round the axis of vision. If another rhomboid of Iceland spar be placed behind the first, in a similar position, the pencil refracted in the ordinary way by the first will be so also by the second; and the same thing holds with the extraordinary refracted pencil, none of the pencils being separated into two, as before. But if the second rhomboid be slowly turned round, while the first remains stationary, each of the pencils begins to be separated into two; and, when the eighth part of a revolution is completed, the whole of each of the pencils is divided into two portions. When the fourth part of a revolution is completed, the pencil, refracted in the ordinary way by the first crystal, will be refracted in the extraordinary way only by the second; and the pencil, refracted in the extraordinary way by the first, will be refracted in the ordinary way only by the second; so that the four pencils will be again reduced to two. At the end of three-eighths, five-eighths, and seven-eighths, of a revolution, the same phenomena will be exhibited as at the end of one-eighth of a revolution. At the end of four-eighths and six-eighths of a revolution, the same phenomena will be seen as at the first position of the crystals, and at the end of two-eighths of a revolution. If we look at a luminous object through the two rhomboids, we shall at the commencement of the revolution see only two images, viz. one of the least and one of the greatest refracted images. At the end of one Britain. To the mainland was given at first the name of New South Britain; but as that title, it was suggested, might lead to confusion with other places, Mr. Smith changed its name to New South Shetland, on account of its lying in about the same latitude as the Shetland Islands. He afterwards ascertained the existence and situation of the land for the length of 150 miles in a W. S.W. direction. Mr. Smith having transmitted his observations to the British commanding officer in the Pacific, captain Shireff of the Andromache, who was at that time in Santiago, this officer forthwith chartered the brig Williams on government account, in order to make an accurate and regular survey of the coasts and harbours. Captain Basil Hall, F. R. S., has since been sent out, we understand, for the purpose of exploring and surveying this new region. The results we have not met with. eighth of a revolution four images will be seen; and so on. It is obvious that the light which forms these images has suffered some new modification, or acquired some new property, which prevented it, in particular parts of a revolution, from penetrating the second rhomboid. This property has been called polarisation; and light is said to be polarised by passing through a rhomboid of calcareous spar, or any other doubly refracted crystals. See OPTICS, sect. 186-285. 6 POLARISATION OF SOUND. The following curious facts, which are considered to prove the polarisation of sound, are given by Mr. Wheatstone, in the Annals of Philosophy, No. xxxii. p. 87:- I connected,' says he, a tuning fork with one extremity of a straight conducting rod, the other end of which communicated with a sounding-board; on causing the tuning-fork to sound, the vibrations were powerfully transmi ted, but, in gradually bending the rod, the sound progressively decreased, and was scarcely perceptible when the angle was a right one. the angle was made more acute, the phenomena were produced in an inverted order; the intensity gradually increased as it had before diminished, and, when the two parts were nearly parallel, it became as powerful as in the rectilineal transmission. By multiplying the right angles in a rod, the transmission of the vibration may be completely stopped.' As In these experiments, the axis of the oscillations of the tuning-fork should be perpendicular to the plane of the moveable angles; for, if they are parallel, they will still be transmitted. Mr. Wheatstone gives the following explanation to prove this: I placed a tuning-fork perpendicularly on the side of a rectilineal rod. The vibrations were therefore communicated at right angles; when the axis of the oscillations of the fork coincided with the rod, the intensity of the transmitted vibrations was at its maximum. In proportion as the axis deviated from parallelism, the intensity diminished, and, when it became perpendicular, the intensity was a minimum.' The phenomena of polarisation may be observed in many chorded instruments. The chords of the harp are attached to a conductor which has the same direction as the sounding-board; if any chord be altered from its quiescent position, so that its axis of oscillation shall be parallel with the bridge or conductor, its tone will be full; but if the oscillations be excited, so that their axes shall be at right angles with the conductor, the tone will be feeble. POLE, n. s. & v. a. Į Sax. pole Armen. POLE-AXE. Š paol; Fr. pal; Ital. palo; Lat. palus. A long staff; a long piece of timber erected; a rod, or perch, containing five yards and a half; any measure of length: to urnish with poles: a pole-axe, an axe fixed to a pole. This ordinance of tithing them by the pole is not only fit for the gentlemen, but also the noblemen. Spenser. Withered is the garland of the war, Shakspeare. Antony and Cleopatra. Shakspeare. A long pole, struck upon gravel in the bottom of the water, maketh a sound. He ordered to arm long poles with sharp hooks, wherewith they took hold of the tackling which held the mainyard to the mast; then, rowing the ship, they cut the tackling, and brought the mainyard by the board. Arbuthnot on Coins. POLE, n. s. PO'LAR, adj. POLAR'ITY, n. s. POLAR'Y, adj. POLE-STAR, n. s. Fr. pole; Lat. polus, polaris. The extremity of the earth's axis, north or south polar and polary are pertaining to or near either of the poles; having a tendency to one of the poles: polarity, such tendency. If a pilot at sea cannot see the polestar, let him steer his course by such stars as best appear to him. King Charles. As when two polar winds, blowing adverse Upon the Cronian sea, together drive Mountains of ice. Milton's Paradise Lost. From the centre thrice to the utmost pole. Milton. This polarity from refrigeration, upon extremity and defect of a loadstone, might touch a needle any Browne's Vulgar Errours. Irons, heated red hot, and cooled in the meridian from North to South, contract a polary power. where. Browne. From pole to pole The forky lightnings flash, the roaring thunders roll. Dryden. I was sailing in a vast ocean without other help than the polestar of the ancients. Id. I doubt, If any suffer on the polar coast, The rage of Arctos, and eternal frost. Prior, Heaven speed the canvass, gallantly unfurled, To furnish and accommodate a world, To give the pole the produce of the sun, And knit the unsocial climates into one.- Couper. POLE, in astronomy, one of the points in the heavens round which the whole sphere seems to turn. It is also used for a point directly perpendicular to the centre of any circle's plane, and distant from it by the length of a radius. POLE, in geography, one of the points on which the terraqueous globe turns; each of them being ninety degrees distant from the equator, and, in consequence of their situation, the inclination of the earth's axis, and its parallelism during the annual motion of our globe round the sun, having only one day and one night throughout the year. Owing to the obliquity with which the rays of the sun fall upon the poles, and the great length of the winter, the cold is so intense that those parts of the globe have never been fully explored, though the attempt has been repeatedly made by the most celebrated navigators. Their attempts indeed have chiefly been confined to the northern regions; for, with regard to the south pole, there is not the same incitement to attempt it. The great object for which navigators have adventured into these frozen seas was to find out a more ready passage to the East Indies; and this has been attempted three several ways: one by coasting along the northern parts of Europe and Asia, called the north-east passage; another, by sailing round the northern part of the American continent, called the north-west passage; and the third, by sailing directly over the pole itself. See POLAR REGIONS. POLE, MAGNETIC. See MAGNET and MAG NETISM. Sir Richard Pole, Lord Montague, was born at POLE (Reginald), cardinal, younger son of Stoverton Castle, in Staffordshire, in the year 1500. At seven years of age he was sent to a Carthusian monastery at Sheen, near Richmond in Surry; and thence, when about twelve, In 1513 moved to Magdalen College, Oxford. he took the degree of A. B., and was admitted to deacon's orders; in 1517 he was made prebendary of Salisbury, and in 1519 dean of Wimborne and Exeter. When about nineteen, be was sent to finish his studies at Padua in Italy, where he resided some time in great splendor, having a handsome pension from king Henry VIII. He returned to England in 1525, where he was graciously received at court; but, preferring study, he retired to the convent at Sheen, for about two years, when Henry began to di vulge his scruples concerning his marriage with Catharine of Spain. Pole avoided, all danger of giving offence, by asking leave to visit Paris and Italy; and his pension was continued. The king, having now divorced queen Catharine, married Anne Boleyn; and, being resolved to throw off the papal yoke, ordered Dr. Sampson to write a book in justification of his conduct, which he sent to Pole for his opinion. To this Pole, secure in the pope's protection, wrote an answer, entitled Pro Unitate Ecclesiasticâ. and |