The British Arctic Expedition sailed from Portsmouth on 29 May 1875. It left amid considerable public enthusiasm and with a telegram from the Queen. A contemporary journal had this to say: As we hope, so we believe that they will end their northward advance only at the northernmost meeting of the meridians; that they will return in safety to receive well-won applause and reward for their achievements; and that they will have very much to tell of the circum-polar region, as well as of their hoisting the Union Jack upon the Pole, (The Navy, 1875). The tone of the same journal was very different when reporting the return of the expedition in 1876, one year earlier than expected. One of the milder statements in a highly derogatory article read: Verily the expedition of 18756 has but little of which to boast. It went out like a rocket, and has come back like the stick. The validity of such a judgement needs careful examination against the aims and logistics of the expedition, the attitudes of the officers and men, and, most importantly, the actual achievementsand shortcomingsof the voyage.

Nares is perhaps best known as the commander of the Challenger expedition from 1872 to 1874, a voyage of exploration which, it has been said, laid the foundations of almost every branch of oceanography as we know it today (British Museum, 1973). He also achieved fame as commander of the British Arctic Expedition of 187576, and as the author of Seamanship, which went through many editions in the second half of the 19th century. He is a fine example of the serving naval officer in the tradition of Parry, Franklin and Ross, one who could combine a naval career with a broad interest in science and the active pursuit of geographical exploration.

It has long been supposed that repeated exposure of a man to cold conditions might be expected to produce changes within him which would better enable him to stand up to those cold conditionsto acclimatize to cold. Until recently, however, there has been little and conflicting evidence of the mechanism of such changes. Accounts of the polar explorers of the Scott-Amundsen era reveal that these men were exposed to severe cold stresses, but unfortunately the sophisticated research facilities necessary to measure the various factors involved were not then available. Now that these facilities are available, man conducts his polar activities under far more comfortable conditions, and the degree of cold stress to which he is exposed is probably of a much smaller order. Small wonder, then, that research into the elusive phenomenon of acclimatization to cold has yielded little profit. In fact, the available evidence suggests that the polar traveller may well undergo a marked heat stress as a result of strenuous exercise under conditions in which he is unable to get rid of surplus heat easily. This article looks at the basic physiological problems of heat loss and heat conservation with which the modern polar traveller has to contend, and points out the results of some recent investigations.

Today the north is no longer remote and insulated from the demands of modern society, and northern Quebec is no exception. Principal threats to the environment come from mining, pipeline construction and hydro-electric developments. In the negotiations that are going on today between the native peoples, who are trying to protect what is left of their culture, and the developers from the south, there is a large divergence of opinion about what is important. When the native peoples are asked to document their use of natural resources in the courts they find themselves at a great disadvantage due to the lack of written history about their activities. The value of renewable natural resources that have sustained indigenous populations for thousands of years is difficult to quantify and can easily be made to look insignificant in comparison to the often exaggerated benefits of development proposals. For this reason it is important to make available whatever factual information there is and to present it in an unbiased manner.

Seven British Antarctic Survey stations were operational during the year. However, in March 19755 Stonington Island was closed after 21 years of occupation. A number of senior Survey staff visited the bases this season, including Dr R. J. Adie (Deputy Director), Dr C. Swithinbank (Head of Earth Sciences), Mr W. N. Bonner (Head of Life Sciences), Dr J. Dudeney (Leader of the Ionospherics Section), and Mr W. Sloman (Head of Administration).

The Greenland Ice Sheet Program (GISP) in August 1975 completed its fourth successful field programme since its beginning in 1971. The GISP research is aimed at the investigation of glaciological, geophysical, geochemical and palaeo-climatological parameters of the Greenland ice sheet and at the interpretation of these factors in terms of climatic significance for the present and for the future.

Current theories and observations in magnetospheric physics suggest that low-energy particle fluxes, exhibiting the characteristics of solar-wind particles, have direct access to certain regions of the high-latitude polar ionosphere (Akasofu and Lanzerotti, 1975). The precipitation of these particles occurs over a few degrees of latitude and several hours of magnetic time (centred on geomagnetic noon) and this region has been termed the dayside magnetospheric cleft (Vasyliunas, 1974). The resultant phenomena, such as dayside auroral emissions, have not been extensively studied due to the rather remote location of accessible land mass at latitudes high enough for observations at local apparent noon to be made (Fig 1). Magnetospheric cleft observations have been carried out from instrumental aircraft (Whalen and Pike, 1973) and from Cape Parry, NWT (Peterson and Shepherd, 1974) in previous winters. Aircraft observations are, obviously, of limited duration and twilight at Cape Parry severely restricts photometric observations.