The need to record and report the distribution of floating ice has arisen where-ever ships have been required to sail regularly in ice-filled waters. Various systems have been developed to meet the needs of particular areas, but these have grown up largely independently of each other. Such systems are generally designed to fulfil either, or both, of two purposes. One is the immediate end of providing material for a synoptic ice map, which is the basis of help to ships in the form of statements of the present whereabouts of the ice or predictions of its movements for a short period ahead. The other is a longer-term end, such as ice probability study, which seeks to utilize past records over as many years as possible in order to ascertain, in general terms, the probability of access to a given place at a given time; a result of such a study may be, for example, an ice atlas, of which two, covering wide areas, have appeared since the Second World War. Another long-term end is use of the ice pattern as an index of climatic change. Both lines of ice study require detailed information on the state of the ice, but each puts it to a different use. The problem, then, consists of devising a means of recording on paper, either photographically, cartographically, by means of explanatory text, or in some form of code convenient for radio transmission, the relevant facts about the distribution and behaviour of an area of floating ice, and also of reporting these in comprehensible terms, first to a collecting centre, and then to the users.

During the summer of 1956 W. W. Phipps flew a Piper Super-Cub aircraft solo from Pelley Lake to Eureka, and there carried out a series of local flights in Ellesmere Island on behalf of the National Film Board of Canada. The aircraft was equipped with standard tandem wheel undercarriage. Carrying one passenger, Phipps landed at Fort Conger, Alert and Cape Columbia. The round trip from Pelley Lake took 11 days covering a distance of 4500 miles in fifty flying hours.

On 25 July 1958 the writer left Ottawa with a float-equipped Piper Super-Cub to fly to Eureka. Overnight stops were made at Moose Factory, Severn, Churchill (two nights on account of low cloud), an unnamed lake 50 miles short of Baker Lake, Baker Lake itself (because of strong N.W. winds), an unnamed pond 10 miles south-west of Bellot Strait, and at Resolute.

In 1956 the University Library of Aberdeen acquired a journal written by one George Kerr, surgeon aboard the Aberdeen whaling ship Christian, during a voyage to the whale fisheries in the Greenland Sea, west and north-west of Spitsbergen. The voyage, which was in 1791, took them as far north as lat. 81° N. The journal is seventy-nine pages long, on quarto-sized paper, and written in brown ink in a good, clear hand. A number of whalers' log books exist, recording winds and tides and noting extraordinary events, there are also published memoirs covering several voyages or giving a picture of whaling in general—like William Scoresby's book which includes an exciting narrative of the voyage of the Esk, under his command, to Spitsbergen waters, and of her preservation under most difficult circumstances. Kerr's journal is a spirited day-to-day account of an eventful though profitless voyage—the ship returning “clean” with no catch.

Although the principles of water supply and sewage disposal in the north of Canada are the same as those for more temperate regions, the physical features of the installations often vary with the influence of low temperature and permafrost. These not only create technical problems of design but, when coupled with the relative isolation of most northern sites, they also introduce serious economic considerations. Operating costs as well as initial construction costs are higher, making facilities of the kind normally provided too expensive for many people.

Scientific interest in the Falkland Islands Dependencies was revived after a lapse of some years when Operation “Tabarin” was formed in 1943, under the auspices of the Royal Navy. In spite of severe wartime limitations on equipment, a great deal of fundamental survey and geological work was accomplished during these early years. The Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey (F.I.D.S.), which was established in 1946, continued the scientific work of Operation “Tabarin”, and since that date it has gradually expanded its scientific activities in the Dependencies. The Survey is now solely responsible for all official British geological investigations undertaken in the Dependencies.

The early exploration of east Greenland between lats. 70° N. and 82° N. was the work of several nations, and Danish, Swedish, German and British expeditions all played their parts in it. In the last three decades, however, although other groups have made valuable contributions, the expeditions under the leadership of Lauge Koch have been of paramount importance by virtue of the large numbers of scientists involved, the range of the studies, and, in particular, the continuity of effort. This continuity has enabled an unusual degree of foresight and planning to be applied to the operations. Even in these more favoured circumstances, however, “greater results might possibly have been obtained if the means had been ensured beforehand, so that the work could have been planned for a longer period of years at a time”. It has been the policy to concentrate on geological survey as the basic scientific inquiry in this uninhabited, almost virgin, territory. This emphasis on geology has, in turn, stressed the need for detailed geographical information, and stimulated topographical survey to produce an adequate coverage of medium-scale maps for a large part of the region. Other fields have not been overlooked, and biologists—studying the fauna and flora of both land and sea—meteorologists, glaciologists, hydrographers, and archaeologists have been included in the parties.

This glossary is mainly concerned with land ice and associated terms, and is therefore complementary to the glossary of predominantly sea ice terms published in the Polar Record, Vol. 8, No. 52, 1956, p. 4–12. It is hoped that the two, taken together and incorporating any necessary amendments, will form the basis of a Special Publication which the Institute hopes to issue when funds allow.

The study of the insects of northern Canada has in the past depended mainly on a very small number of collections obtained by the early explorers, by a few individuals concerned with mapping and other scientific investigations, and by missionaries. The work of Kirby (1837), the reports of the Canadian Arctic Expedition (Hewitt, 1922) and the Fifth Thule Expedition (Henriksen, 1937), and a few short papers represent the main contributions of many years.

Organized entomological research in northern Canada began in 1947 as a joint project of the Defence Research Board of the Canada Department of National Defence, and the Divisions of Entomology, Botany and Plant Pathology of the Canada Department of Agriculture. The research programme was divided into three major phases:

This list was first published in the second edition of the Antarctic Pilot (London, Hydrographie Department, 1948, p. 6–25). Since that time it has been possible to make a large number of important corrections and additions. A check-list of this kind has been found necessary for classifying original log books, published narratives and other documents connected with the expeditions. It is hoped that it will also prove of value to those engaged in Antarctic research who may wish to check which expeditions have visited any particular area.

In 1954 the Geophysics Research Directorate of the Air Force Cambridge Research Center (AFCRC), at the request of Northeast Air Command, United States Air Force, organized a study of the physical properties, growth, and bearing capacity of sea ice. The object of the study was to gain information about the conditions under which various aircraft and vehicles could operate on sea ice, for supply and rescue purposes. The Navy Hydrographic Office (NHO) and the Snow, Ice and Permafrost Research Establishment (SIPRE) of the Army Corps of Engineers also took part in the project. The spheres of interest of each organization were as follows: AFCRC, the application of geophysical and crystallographic methods to the study of sea ice; NHO, the details of the relations between meteorological conditions and the growth rate and general physical properties of sea ice; and SIPRE, the variation of the strength of sea ice as determined by small-scale field tests, and the application of this information toward an analysis of the bearing capacity of sea ice.

About half a million square miles of Labrador and Quebec lie in the Arctic and sub-Arctic north of the closed-crown, boreal forest. Although the boundary between the unbroken coniferous forest and the open lichen woodlands has only recently been denned accurately, it has been known for many years to correspond roughly to the 51° 30′ N. parallel except for a northern extension in the east to Lake Melville. This forest zonal division also marked approximately the northern boundary of the province of Quebec until the district of Ungava was incorporated into the province in 1912; in addition it forms the northern limit of logging operations by the pulp industry, and coincides roughly with the southern edge of the lake plateau that dominates the interior of the peninsula. Until the last few years the vast region was inhabited by less that 6000 Eskimos and Indians, a few traders, and, on the Labrador coast, small numbers of fishermen and their families.

The ice bridges described in this article are constructed annually to replace the ferries which operate during the summer on the Yukon, Pelly and Stewart rivers in Yukon Territory. These river crossings are on the Mayo Road connecting Dawson City and Mayo with the Alaska Highway. The traffic on the road consists largely of heavy trucks carrying mining ores from the United Keno Hill, and other mines.

For some years members of the Underwater Demolition Teams of the United States Navy have been carrying out experiments in skin-diving in Arctic and Antarctic waters, with the object of determining the limits of man's endurance in these conditions. The main military purposes of swimming in polar waters are to assist the escape of ships beset in ice by blasting channels out to open water, and to reconnoitre landing beaches which are protected by ice. Secondary operations include inspection and repair of under-water damage to ships and the recovery of submerged equipment.

Recent advances in rock magnetism have established the value of measuring the direction of the remanent magnetism of many kinds of rock. Provided certain conditions are satisfied, individual measurements relate to magnetic pole positions and sufficient measurements give a mean position which may indicate the geographical pole. Thus from determinations of a number of samples of rock from a geological formation, with suitable corrections, the latitude and geographical orientation of the rock at the time when it assumed its magnetic field may be postulated. This restricts and, in due course, may define palaeogeographical reconstructions and so serve to identify movements of the crust in relation to each other and to the poles. Results so far obtained show that averaged pole positions from successive rocks, ranging through many hundreds of millions of years in the same relatively undisturbed areas, lie on curves extending through many tens of degrees of arc. Moreover, similar curves, uniting near the present poles today but diverging considerably when traced backwards in time, derive from different continents, suggesting that both relative continental movements and polar wandering must be taken seriously. From the pattern of pole positions from dated rocks it may be possible to correlate rocks of unknown age (e.g. unfossiliferous and Pre-Cambrian rocks), and solve some petrogenetic problems.