one occasion the thermometer touched 16 deg. above zero.
But even in this unseasonably weather the temperature has been well below freezing point.
Mr. Haines, the senior meteorologist of the Byrd expedition, states that the streams of warm air are pouring through the upper atmosphere from the oceans to the north.
He does not know whether the present spell of warm weather in the Antarctic is exceptional, as the data in regard to winter conditions are limited.
According to popular belief there is a great similarity between the Arctic and Antarctic regions, both being intensely cold, covered with ice and snow, and having months of continuous daylight in summer, and months of continuous darkness in winter.
But to scientists the contrasts between the two Polar regions are more striking than their similarities.
The Arctic region is an ocean, with numerous islands, and is surrounded by the north coasts of the three continents of Europe, Asia and America, but the Antarctic is a continent surrounded by ocean.
This continent of Antarctica is about 4,000,000 square miles in extent, and, therefore, is not
only larger than Australia, but larger than Europe. “Antarctica possesses a distinctive character, which in many particulars is distinctively unique,” states Mr. J. Gordon Hayes, in his book “Antarctica.”
“Its most prominent feature is its dis-similarity from other continents. It has no water apart from the sea which en-circles it, and this near the coasts is almost invariably frozen. It has no
rivers except a few small glacial streams, whose bonds are unsealed occasionally in summer. Glaciers are the rivers of Antarctica.
It has no lakes, and few frozen pools. It has no trees or flowers, no soil worth cultivating, no land animals, no inhabitants, and has never seen a woman.
It is positively unique as a continent in its isolation and height above sea level, in the heaviness of its glacierisation with its barrier of shelf ice, the magnitude of its glaciers and continental ice and the velocity we might say ferocity—of its winds.
“In the distribution of land and water there are striking contrasts between north and south Polar regions,” states Dr. R. N. Rudmose Brown in his book “The Polar Regions.” “The North Polar regions consist of an ice-covered sea almost completely girdled by continental land.
In that sea, the Arctic Ocean, lie various groups of islands, large and small, which are all more or less accessible. None lie in the heart of the ice-covered sea, but all are strictly Polar.
The Pole itself is in deep water. Sea and not land is the dominant feature of the Arctic. In the
south the principal feature is the great ice-covered continent on which lies the Pole. The continent is girdled completely by a great ocean, which cuts off Antarctica from the nearest
land masses.
The Arctic is a region of varied climates, and so of varied productiveness; the Antarctic has one
climate, that varies only in degrees, and is everywhere unproductive.
The Arctic abounds in plant and animal life; the Antarctic, apart from the sea is a barren desert.”