the Arctic seas has given rise to the hypothesis that certain species have been able to pass from one frigid zone to the other. It is argued on the other hand that all the forms which resemble each other in the two polar areas are cosmopolitan, and occur also in the intermediate seas; but the so-called “problem of bipolarity” is still unsettled. Bird life on sea and land is fairly abundant, the most common forms being the skua gull, snow petrels, and the various species of penguins. The penguins are specially adapted for an aquatic life, and depend for their food entirely on marine animals. The largest species, the emperor penguin, inhabits the most southerly coast known on the edge of the Great Barrier, and there it breeds at mid-winter, very interesting specializations of structure and habit making this apparently impossible feat practicable. The social organization and habits of the various species of penguins have been carefully studied, and show that these birds have arrived at a stage of what might almost be called civilization worthy of the most intelligent beings native to their continent. The only mammalian life in the Antarctic is marine, in the form of various species of whales, but not the “right whale,” and a few species of seals which live through the winter by keeping open blow-holes in the sea-ice. There is no trace of any land animal except a few species of minute wingless insects of a degenerate type. The fresh-water ponds teem with microscopic life, the tardigrada, or “water bears” and rotifers showing a remarkable power of resistance to low temperature, being thawed out alive after being frozen solid for months and perhaps for years.
Authorities.—H. R. Mill, The Siege of the South Pole, a history of Antarctic exploration with complete bibliography (London, 1905); K. Fricker, Antarktis (Berlin, 1898; trans. as The Antarctic Regions (London, 1900); A. Rainaud, Le Continent austral. (Paris, 1893, historical); E. S. Balch, Antarctica (New York, 1902, historical); James Cook, A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World (3 vols, London, 1777); H. Gravelius, F. von Bellingshausens Forschungsfahrten im südlichen Eismeer 1819–1821 (Leipzig, 1902); James Weddell, A Voyage Towards the South Pole (London, 1825); J. S. C. Dumont D’Urville, Voyage au Pôle Sud et dans l’Océanie (29 vols, Paris, 1841–1845); Charles Wilkes, Narrative of the Exploring Expedition during 1838–1842 (6 vols, Philadelphia, 1845); J. C. Ross, Voyage of Discovery and Research tn the Southern and Antarctic Regions (2 vols., London, 1847); W. G. Burn-Murdoch, From Edinburgh to the Antarctic (London, 1894; an account of the voyage of the “ Balaena,” 1892–1893); H. J. Bull, The Cruise of the “Antarctic” to the South Polar Regions (London, 1896); the voyage to Victoria Land in 1894 1895)i F. A. Cook, Through the First Antarctic Night, 1898–1899 (New York and London, 1900); the voyage of the “Belgica”; A. de Gerlache, Quinze mois dans l’Antarctique (Paris, 1902); Georges Lecointe, Au pays des Manchots (“Belglca,” Brussels, 1904); Resultats du volyage du S. Y. “Belglca,” Rapports scientifiques (many vols., Brusse s, v.d.); C. E. Borchgrevink, First on the Antarctic Continent (London, 1901); L. Bernacchi, To the South Polar Regions (London, 1901; the expedition of the “Southern Cross”); Report on the Collections of the “Southern Cross” (British Museum, London, 1902); G. Murray (editor), The Antarctic Manual (London, 1901); R. F. Scott, The Voyage of the “Discovery” (2 vols, London, 1905); A. B. Armitage, Two Years in the Antarctic (London, 1905); National Antarctic Expedition 1901–1904 (scientific results published by the Royal Society, London, several vols., v.d.); G. von Neumayer, Auf zum Sudpol (Berlin, 1901); E. von Drygalski, Zum Kontinent des eisigen Sudens (Berlin, 1904); Scientific Results of “Gauss” expedition; Otto Nordenskjold and J. G Andersson, Antarctica (London, 1905); R. N. R. Brown, R. C. Mossman and J. H. H. Pirie, The Voyage of the “Scotia” (London, 1906); Report on the Scientific Results of the Voyage of the “Scotia” (several vols, Edinburgh, v.d); J. B. Charcot, Le Français au Pôle Sud (Paris, 1906): E. H. Shackleton, The Heart of the Antarctic (2 vols, London, 1909); British Antarctic Expedition 1907–1909. Reports on the Scientific Investigations (several vols., London, v.d.). (H. R. M.)
POLDER, the Dutch name for a piece of low-lying, marshy land reclaimed from the sea or other water by drainage and diking (see Holland).
POLE (Family). The family of the Poles, earls and dukes of Suffolk, which, but for Richard III’s defeat at Bosworth, might have given the next king to England, had its origin in a house of merchants at Kingston-upon-Hull. It has been said that these Poles were the first English peers whose fortunes had been founded upon riches gained in trade; but the Berkeleys, descendants of Robert fitz Harding, the rich burghers of Gloucester,
must perhaps be reckoned before them. Their pedigree begins
with one Will1am atte Pole (d. c. 1329), a merchant of Ravensrode who settled in Hull, where his widow became the wife of John Rotenhering, also a merchant. His sons, Sir Richard and Sir William atte Pole, were both famous for their wealth at a time when the Crown had great need of rich men’s aid. Sir Richard (d. 1345), the king’s butler in 1327, removed to London,
and is styled a London citizen in his will. The male line of this, the elder branch of the Poles, failed with a grandson, John Pole, who by his marriage with Joan, daughter of John, Lord Cobham, was father of Joan, Lady of Cobham, the Kentish
heiress whose lands brought her five knightly husbands, the
fourth of them Sir John Oldcastle the Lollard.
Sir William atte Pole (d. 1366), the second son of William, joined his brother in advancing large sums to the government while keeping safely apart from politics. The first mayor of Hull, he sat for Hull in five parliaments, and was advanced to be knight banneret and a baron of the exchequer. He was counted “second to no merchant in England,” but after his time his descendants left the counting-house, his four sons all serving in the French wars. The eldest son, Michael Pole, who had fought under the Black Prince and John of Gaunt, was summoned as a baron in 1366, before the father’s death, and, as a stout supporter of the Crown, was appointed in 1381 governor of the person of the young king Richard II., whose marriage with the Lady Anne of Bohemia he had arranged on a visit to her brother the king of the Romans. In 1383 he became chancellor of England and thereafter, as the loyal servant and nearest counsellor of the king, he had to face the jealousy of the great lords and the hatred of the Commons. His wealth added to the envy of his enemies, for, to his inherited Yorkshire and Lincolnshire lands, his marriage with Catherine, daughter and heir of Sir John of Wingfield, added a great Suffolk estate, where, fortifying the manor-house of the Wingfields, he made his chief seat. In 1385 he was created earl of Suffolk, a grant from the Crown giving him the castle and honour of Eye with other East Anglian lands formerly held by the Ufford earls. In 1386 the opposition, led by Gloucester, the king’s uncle, pulled him down. He was dismissed from his chancellorship, and impeached by the Commons on charges which, insufficient upon the face of them, secured his conviction. Richard was forced to send his minister into ward at Windsor until the parliament was dissolved, when Suffolk once more appeared as the leader of the king’s party. But the opposition was insistent, and Suffolk, after Richard had been compelled to give his word that those who had advised him ill should answer for it to the next parliament, lied over sea to Calais. One of the earliest of the many popular songs that bark against the Poles tells joyfully of this flight of the detested “Jake.” Sentence of death by the gallows was passed in his absence. The over-zealous governor of Calais who found him at his gates, clad as a poor Fleming, his chin shaved, packed him back to England, whence he escaped again, doubtless with the king’s aid, reaching his native town of Hull, where he saw for the last time his “goodly house of brick.” Old friends found him a ship that landed him in the Low Countries, and he died an exile in Paris in 1389.
The exile’s son Michael, who had married Catherine, daughter of the earl of Stafford, was restored to the earldom in 1397, and, although his father’s attainder was revived by the act of the first parliament of Henry IV., the earldom was restored once again in 1399, together with the castle and honour of Eye. His life was that of a soldier, and he was with the host before Harfleur in 1415, when he died of a violent dysentery. Michael, the eldest son and heir, marched from his father’s deathbed to Agincourt, where he fell, Drayton’s ballad recalling how he plied his axe on the great day. By his wife, a daughter of the first duke of Norfolk, he had three daughters, but no one of them marrying, his lands passed with the earldom to his brother William.
This William (1396–1450), the fourth earl of his name, had sailed with his father and elder brother to Harfieur, but had
