Page:Polar Exploration - Bruce - 1911.djvu/89

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SEA ICE AND COLORATION
85

taken by the frost months previously, began to lay them as soon as it had melted out, and continued its life as if nothing had happened during this long period of sleep. The researches of Mr. James Murray in the Antarctic Regions have since demonstrated the same phenomena, and he has further demonstrated that the Antarctic rotifers, after being frozen and melted, and then dried, can be subjected to the temperature of boiling water for a short time and yet continue to live.

The preservation of wooden crosses on old graves in Spitsbergen and other parts of the Arctic Regions as well as the remnants of wooden houses three centuries old, to say nothing of much of the driftwood which must have been left high and dry many centuries ago, is a striking piece of evidence of the sterility of the Arctic Regions from bacteria. The time will certainly come when a country like Spitsbergen and other parts of Polar Regions will be utilized as sanatoria, at least for the summer months. Concerning the bacterial sterility of the atmosphere, we have the striking facts that, under ordinary conditions, it is not possible to "catch cold" in Polar Regions, and that every germ disease is checked. A person who has a tendency to rheumatism in Britain or any similar country will not be attacked by rheumatism (unless possibly he is a very chronic rheumatic