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SUMMER DAY AND WINTER NIGHT.

scribe an almost unbroken circle in the sky for many days and nights, and had we been a few degrees further north we should have seen it describe an entire circle. As it was, it only disappeared for twenty minutes. It set about midnight, and in twenty minutes it rose again; so that there was no night, not even twilight, but a bright, beautiful blazing day, for several weeks together.

Dr. Kane describes the midnight sun thus: "On our road we were favoured with a gorgeous spectacle, which hardly any excitement of peril could have made us overlook. The midnight sun came out over the northern crest of the great berg, our late 'fast friend,' kindling variously-coloured fires on every part of its surface, and making the ice around us one great resplendency of gem-work—blazing carbuncles and rubies, and molten gold."

Very different indeed is the aspect of the winter night. Let the same authority speak, for he had great experience thereof.

On December 15th he writes: "We have lost the last vestige of our mid-day twilight. We cannot see print, and hardly paper. The fingers cannot be counted a foot from the eyes. Noonday and midnight are alike; and, except a vague glimmer on the sky, that seems to define the hill-outlines to the south, we have nothing to tell us that this arctic world of ours has a sun. In one week more we shall reach the midnight of the year……

"The influence of this long intense darkness was