13. The effect of the long winter night is even greater on the body than on the mind, because of the insufficient opportunities for exercise. Middendorf contrasting the influence of climate on men remarks:—“I consider travels in cold regions, even in the most unfavourable conditions of climate, to be far less dangerous to life than travels under the tropics. The former certainly are unutterably more miserable, but as certainly less deadly. I say this notwithstanding the danger which threatens ships when they penetrate far within the realms of ice. We are never secure from sudden and deadly attacks of illness in tropical countries, but the longer we remain in them the less is the danger; whereas the high North deteriorates the constitution of the blood, and after three winters, very few can stand a fourth.” To the influences of Polar life detrimental to health must be added the constant hindrance to perspiration from wearing an extra quantity of woollen clothing—more or less hurtful as it is more or less waterproof—the want of fresh animal and vegetable food, and last, but not least, the periodic departure of light and warmth. 14. Our sanitary condition during the two winters we spent on board the _Tegetthoff_ was not altogether satisfactory. Scorbutic affections of the mouth and diseases of the lungs appeared sometimes in distressing shapes, and scarcely a day passed in which we had not one or two on the sick-list. I believe, however, that our trying situation had far more to do with these evils than the southern blood and breeding of our people. The incessant watchfulness and care of Dr. Kepes left nothing undone which would counteract the evil influences to which we were exposed. The berths of the crew were changed in rotation, and those which were exposed to the greatest accumulation of ice were dried by warm air conveyed through movable pipes. Want of exercise, constant change of temperature, depression of mind, the periodic scarcity of fresh meat, were the causes of the scurvy. In our first winter it appeared only in the more crowded quarters of the crew. It was then also that the first symptoms of lung-disease appeared in Krisch, the engineer, which he probably contracted from “catching cold.” From that time he liked to sit by the stove and always complained of cold. Our supplies of preservatives against, and remedies for scurvy were rather limited, although we had at our disposal several hundred tins of preserved vegetables, a cask of cloud-berries (_Rubus chamæmorus_), which we had brought from Tromsoe, and above a hundred bottles of lime-juice. Wine also is an important preservative; we therefore served out to the crew, notwithstanding our small supply, twice a week, not Kepes’ artificial, but real wine—at the rate of two bottles for eighteen men. No doubt scorbutic symptoms would have been far more general and severe, had we not been fortunate enough to shoot no less than sixty-seven Polar bears, a larger number than