member that during this our polar expedition we were not frost-bitten for life, nor did we have to be rescued by a search party. We lived not unlike civilized beings during it all, and we actually brought back some of the information we went out to acquire.
On examining the chart in which the successive appearances of the southern ice-cap are depicted at different times, from June 3 to October 13, or, in terms of the Martian time of year, from May 1 to July 15, the first point to strike one is that the cap was during its whole existence eccentrically placed with regard to the geographical pole of the planet. In other words, the pole of rotation and the pole of cold did not coincide. The latter lay on the average some six degrees distant from the former. This shows that the isotherms in the southern hemisphere of Mars do not coincide with the parallels of latitude.
The manner of the cap's melting further shows that differences of level exist in it. For, in addition to melting round its edge, the cap proceeded to melt asymmetrically. On the first night that Professor W. H. Pickering observed it, on May 22, with the six-inch telescope, he suspected a rift crossing the cap from longitude 330° to longitude 170°. This rift grew more and more evident, until, in the early part of June, it was unmistakable. It grew in visibility chiefly from actual growth in size. On June 6
