ditions we lived wholly by our
own hunting and fishing for twelve months, once in a stone house
(very disagreeable), and another winter in a snow hut (better),
_without fire of any kind to warm us_. On the first of these
expeditions, 1846-7, my little party, there being no officer but
myself, surveyed seven hundred miles of coast of Arctic America by
a sledge journey, which Parry, Ross, Bach, and Lyon had failed to
accomplish, costing the country about L70,000 or L80,000 at the
lowest computation. The total expense of my little party, including
my own pay, was under fourteen hundred pounds sterling.

"My Arctic work has been recognized by the award of the founder's
gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society (before the completion
of the whole of it)."]]

[Footnote 18: 'You can't get a billiard ball to fall a shivering on
its own account.'--I am under correction in this statement by the
Lucasian professor of Cambridge, with respect to the molecules of
bodies capable of 'epipolizing' light. "Nothing seems more natural
than to suppose that the incident vibrations of the luminiferous
ether produce vibratory movements among the ultimate molecules of
sensitive substances, and that the molecules in return, _swinging
on their own account_, produce vibrations in the luminous ether,
and thus cause the sensation of light. The periodic times of these
vibrations depend upon the periods in which the molecules are
_disposed to swing_." ('On the Changes of Refrangibility of Light,'
p. 549.)

It seems to me a pleasant conclusion, this, of recent science, and
suggestive of a perfectly regenerate theology. The 'Let there be
light' of the former Creation is first expanded into 'Let there be
a disposition of the molecules to swing,' and the destinies of
mankind, no less than the vitality of the universe, depend
thereafter upon this amiable, but perhaps capricious, and at all
events not easily influenced or anticipated, disposition!

Is it not also strange that in a treatise entering into so high
mathematical analysis as that from which I quote, the false word
'swing,' expressing the action of a body liable to continuous
arrest by gravitation, should be employed to signify the
oscillation, wholly unaffected by gravity, of substance in which
the motion once originated, may cease only with the essence of the
body?

It is true that in men of high scientific caliber, such as the
writer in this instance, carelessness in expression does