Nansen and Johansen, in an attempt to reach the Pole, left the _Fram_ March 14, 1895, in about 84° N., 100 E., but after an uneventful journey with dogs, they were obliged to turn back on April 7, 1895, in latitude 86° 14′ N. They aimed to reach Spitzbergen and after months of weary effort and varying fortunes, these two hardy men landed on the east coast of the Franz Josef archipelago. Coming winter forbade further progress, so they constructed a hut and subsisted on land and sea game that was fortunately abundant. In the spring of 1896, turning southward, they attempted to reach by the kyak the east coast of Spitzbergen, hoping to be picked up by Norwegian whalers who frequent those waters. Fortunately for them, they met in April, 1896, Jackson, the commander of the Jackson-Harmsworth expedition, near Cape Flora. Meanwhile the _Fram_, continuing its westerly drift, in which it passed the most northerly point reached by Parry in boats in 1827, emerged from the ice-floe of the Arctic ocean in the late summer of 1896 and reached Norway on August 20, about ten days later than Nansen’s own arrival with the English expedition from Franz Josef Land. The _Fram_ returned with its frame uninjured and its expeditionary force in health, after having covered in its voyage across the unknown Polar sea an enormous area, estimated at fifty thousand square miles. [Illustration: DR. FRIDTJOF NANSEN.] The most important discovery was the oceanic depth of the Arctic Sea, where for hundreds of miles this unknown ocean disclosed a depth of over two miles. Naturally the absence of land limited the phases of the scientific work of the expeditionary force, which devoted itself to recording the phenomena of the air and the sea. Nansen in his separate journey utilized his brief opportunities in Franz Josef Land so successfully that his contributions to the geology of that region are of no small importance. The world has looked forward with a degree of impatience to the publication of the scientific results of this expedition, and now is favored with the first volume, a beautiful quarto of some 479 pages, with 46 fine plates. It consists of a series of memoirs on the building of the ship, on the birds of the air, on the crustacean forms of sea life and a geological study of the southern part of the archipelago of Franz Josef Land. It is a striking tribute to English-speaking scientists that the work will appear in English text only. Although printed in Christiana, such has been the vigilance of the editors that typographical errors are comparatively few. The account by Colin Archer of the construction of the _Fram_ is not without interest, in view of the fact that this vessel was built on novel lines calculated to cause the ice to meet a sloping surface, so that, pressing down under the bilge, it would cause the vessel to rise and thus insure its immunity from destruction.