Abstract
HERE is a handbook to the Polar regions, dealing, not with the exploration (of such there are plenty), but with the physical conditions of the regions, for which there was a vacant place. It is well for readers outside Scandinavia that it has been translated from the original Swedish into French: it might well be so into English. In a sense it treats the two polar regions as one, for it is comparative throughout, and for that reason the chapters are not arranged in a topographical sequence. Thus we have successive chapters devoted to Greenland, Iceland, and Spitsbergen; the next chapter deals with the Antarctic lands. The writer ranges widely enough to include among “sub-antarctic” lands Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, the Falkland and other islands, and New Zealand, so far as that Dominion can be considered to lie under such conditions; correspondingly we find chapters on Arctic America (including Labrador), on Siberia, and on north-western Europe. Numerous photographs and sketch-maps accompany the text, and the French translation, which is prefaced by an introduction by Dr. J. Charcot, appears to have been excellently carried out by MM. G. Parmentier and M. Zimmermann. Dr. Nordenskiold's chapters deal with the relief of land, ice conditions and effects, plant and animal distribution, climatic conditions and human life, and, where appropriate, with economic products.
Le Monde Polaire.
By Otto Nordenskjld. Traduit du Sudois par G. Parmentier and M. Zimmermann. Préface du Dr. J. Charcot. Pp. xi + 324 + xx plates. (Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1913.) Price, 5 francs.
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Le Monde Polaire . Nature 92, 164 (1913). https://doi.org/10.1038/092164a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/092164a0