We read and hear so often of the harm done to primitive peoples by contact with European culture, that it is refreshing to find an exception to this rule. The Polar Eskimos of North-West Greenland were introduced to European culture through the visits of expeditions to that region, and there was no control of these until thirty years ago. Yet these Eskimos do not seem to have suffered any harm or to have lost their original independence. A journey to West Greenland is apt to be disappointing, because the original Eskimo race and culture has been greatly modified, but to visit Thule is to see the Eskimos of the story books, dressed in furs and eating literally almost nothing but meat and blubber, most of it raw.

It is one of the characteristics of the human body in health that an even warmth is maintained in its tissues and organs irrespective of the external environment. Whether an individual is undergoing active muscular exercise or is resting, body temperature as measured by the mouth is relatively constant, varying slightly in either direction from the temperature of 98.4° F. The maintenance of such a thermostatic control of body temperature depends on a balance between the heat produced within the body and the heat lost to its external environment by radiation to the surroundings, convection and conduction to the air, and the evaporation of moisture in the sweat from the surface of the skin, and to a lesser extent of water from the lungs.

Most of the major problems of Arctic geography have been solved, and there are now few stretches of coastline which have not been at least roughly mapped. In the Antarctic there are still huge blank spaces on the map, but even there the kind of rough and ready maps that were made by early explorers would now be scarcely adequate. A modern polar survey must be much more accurate and comprehensive if it is to be worth while and have any permanent value, and it therefore takes up rather more of the time which used to be almost entirely devoted to travel. On the other hand, modern inventions such as the light but accurate eyepiece reading theodolite, the camera, and the aeroplane, have made available very much more rapid methods of survey than were possible even twenty years ago.

In order to safeguard the stock of whales in northern seas, special regulations for Svalbard have been proposed by the Norwegian Government. These regulations forbid both Norwegian and foreign subjects to use a land station for the taking and treatment of whales in Svalbard and Jan Mayen. They follow the international agreements of 1937 and 1938 which provide for the closing of the Northern Hemisphere for pelagic baleen whaling and restriction of the activity of land stations to six months of the year.

Dog-driving methods are a subject on which no two people think alike, and whenever two or three men meet together in the Arctic, they form the basis for endless discussion and argument. We can remember many a good night's sleep lost when a visitor arrived apparently tired out, but with enough energy left to sit up all night arguing the relative merits of fan or centre trace, or something of that sort. For this reason we feel rather diffident in adding our opinions to those already published recently in The Polar Record. With regard to different equipment, harness, sledges and team formations—these are almost entirely a question of local conditions and, therefore, not really worth arguing about. For instance, in North-East Greenland, we used regularly fan, centre trace and tandem formations to suit differing snow conditions, etc., and each was, under the right conditions, definitely superior to the other two.