I have been making, all the winter through, a series of experiments which give me some interesting results. They show that evaporation takes place at the very lowest temperatures, and that precipitation often occurs when the air is apparently quite clear. To determine this latter, I have exposed a number of smooth and carefully measured ice-surfaces, and have collected from them the light deposit. These accumulations, after reducing them to the standard of freshly fallen snow, amount thus far to seven eighths of an inch. To determine the evaporation, I have suspended in the open air a number of thin ice-plates, made in a shallow dish, and some strips of wet flannel. The flannel becomes perfectly dry in a few days, and the ice-plates disappear slowly and steadily. I generally weigh them every second day, and it is curious to watch my little circular disks silently melting away and vanishing "into thin air," while the thermometer is down in the zeros. This evaporation at low temperatures is constantly taking place before our eyes, to our advantage. On wash-days the clothes are hung on lines stretched across the ship's rigging, or upon poles across the ice, as you will see on Monday afternoons in the farmhouse yards; and before the week is over the moisture has disappeared, no matter how cold it may be. January 16th. Our eyes now turn wistfully to the south, eagerly watching for the tip of Aurora's chariot, as the fair goddess of the morning rises from the sea to drop a ray of gladness from her rosy fingers into this long-neglected world. It is almost a month since we passed the darkest day of the winter, and it will be a long time yet before we have light; but it is time for us now to have at noontime a faint flush upon the horizon. We find a new excitement, if such it may be called, in the impatience of expectation. Meanwhile I pet my fox. [Sidenote: MY PET FOX.]