32.88
+0.85 33.53
+0.76 33.37
+0.78 33.40
+0.62 33.12

These temperatures of the water are in many respects remarkable. In
the first place, the temperature falls, as will be seen, from the
surface downward to a depth of 80 metres, after which it rises to 280
metres, falls again at 300 metres, then rises again at 326 metres,
where it was +0.49 deg.; then falls to rise again at 450 metres, then
falls steadily down to 2000 metres, to rise once more slowly at the
bottom. Similar risings and fallings were to be found in almost all
the series of temperatures taken, and the variations from one month
to another were so small that at the respective depths they often
merely amounted to the two-hundredth part of a degree. Occasionally
the temperature of the warm strata mounted even higher than mentioned
here. Thus on October 17th at 300 metres it was +0.85 deg., at 350 metres
+0.76 deg., at 400 metres +0.78 deg., and at 500 metres +0.62 deg., after which
it sank evenly, until, towards the bottom, it again rose as before.

We had not expected to meet with much bird life in these desolate
regions. Our surprise, therefore, was not small when on Whitsunday,
May 13th, a gull paid us a visit. After that date we regularly saw
birds of different kinds in our vicinity till at last it became a
daily occurrence, to which we did not pay any particular attention. For
the most part they were ice mews (Larus eburneus), kittiwakes (Rissa
tridactyla), fulmars (Procellaria glacialis), and now and then a
blue gull (L. glaucus), a herring gull (L. argentatus?), or a black
guillemot (Uria grylle); once or twice we also saw a skua (probably
Lestris parasitica)--for instance, on July 14th. On July 21st we had
a visit from a snow-bunting.

On August 3d a remarkable occurrence took place: we were visited by the
Arctic rose gull (Rhodostethia rosea). I wrote as follows about it in
my diary: "To-day my longing has at last been satisfied. I have shot
Ross's gull," [48] three specimens in one day. This rare and mysterious
inhabitant of the unknown north, which is only occasionally seen,
and of which no one knows whence it cometh or whither it goeth, which
belongs exclusively to the world to which the imagination aspires,
is what, from the first mo