THE annual report for 1902 on the iceconditions in the arctic seas has been issued by the Danish Meteorological Institute. According to the abstract in the Geographical Journal, information has come to hand in somewhat fuller measure than in the previous year. After a review of the state of the ice in the different seas around the polar area, the following general conclusions are arrived at. I n 1902 the winter ice broke up very late, and the polar ice lay considerably nearer the northern

more »

... of Asia and Europe than in a normal year. The East Greenland current carried an abnormal quantity of packice, though on the other hand an unusually small number of icebergs were carried from Greenland to the temperate seas, while the extent of polar ice in the northern branches of Baffin bay was smaller than in other recent years. The summer was rough and unsettled in all arctic and subarctic regions (with the partial exception of West Greenland), northerly and easterly winds predominating in the seas north of the Atlantic. These facts quite bear out the conclusions drawn from a consideration of the state of the ice in 1901, viz., that the accumulation of ice north of Spitzbergen caused by the prevailing westerly winds of that year would have an unfavorable influence on the state of the ice round Iceland and Greenland in 1902. Alike in the Barents sea, the region of Franz Josef Land, and around Spitzbergen, East Greenland, and Iceland the conditions were very unfavorable. The northeast, east, and southeast coasts of Spitzbergen were quite inaccessible through the summer; the pack-ice lay in a close broad belt off the coast of East Greenland, rendering access to the northern parts of the coast exceedingly difficult; while round Iceland the state of the ice was more unfavorable than ever since 1892. UNIVERHITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWB.