After a brief outline of how mirages are formed in polar regions, this paper discusses several kinds of mirages noted in the literature of polar exploration—those creating illusory land, the Novaya Zemlya effect, longrange visibility and magnification, and multiple images and the Fata Morgana.

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries British medical missionary Wilfred Grenfell created a mission in northern Newfoundland and Labrador, now part of eastern Canada. The Grenfell Mission's approach to health, educational, agricultural and industrial development are described and its impact on the southeastern Labrador region is examined. The mission changed the region's settlement pattern and economy by creating centralized mission communities: however, its failure to generate sustained economic alternatives to fishing and trapping inadvertently paved the way for the economic dependency still characteristic of the region. The Grenfell case confirms the need for viable development scenarios and for meaningful local participation in community development.

The UN Secretary-General's third Report of September 1987 provided the background for the fifth annual round of the UN's consideration of the ‘Question of Antarctica’. The First Committee's discussions in November 1987 resulted in the adoption by large majorities of two further UN resolutions in favour of a moratorium on the Antarctic minerals regime negotiations, an enhanced UN role in the operations of the Antarctic Treaty System, and the exclusion of South Africa from Consultative Meetings. On the surface, the session might be dismissed as yet another ‘sterile annual UN ritual’, serving to confirm the international community's lack of consensus about the future management of Antarctica. In reality, the episode, suggesting that the UN/Antarctic relationship may be at the crossroads, offered several points of interest, including increased signs of strain within the Antarctic Treaty System consequent upon the South African issue, and a greater appreciation by the critics of the need to work for change within the framework of the existing Antarctic Treaty regime.

Windward, a three-masted barque, was built in Peterhead in 1860 for the whaling trade, and fitted with steam engines in 1866. Almost every year for 33 years she visited the Arctic in pursuit of whales and seals, latterly belonging to the Grays, an outstanding Peterhead whaling family. Sold in 1894 to Captain Joseph Wiggins, she was bought later in the same year by Alfred Harmsworth for the use of Frederick G. Jackson in his exploration of Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa (Franz Josef Land). Windward was Jackson's ship for three years, including one winter beset in the ice; journeying from her, Jackson substantially recharted Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa, and the ship brought home Fridtjof Nansen after his epic drift with the polar ice. In 1897 Harmsworth offered the vessel to Robert Peary, who was planning an assault on the North Pole from the northern tip of Greenland or from Ellesmere Island. After four years with Peary, including two winters trapped in the ice, Windward returned to her roots in whaling from Scotland. She was lost in Davis Strait in 1907.

The final phase of operation of the US National Science Foundation research vessel, USNS Eltanin, was under the terms of an agreement between agencies of the governments of the US and the Republic of Argentina. Renamed ARA Islas Orcadas and operated by the Argentine Naval Hydrographic Service, the ship collected more than 2100 m of sediment cores and other specimens from the South Atlantic sector of the Southern Ocean over a five-year period. These materials were shipped to Florida State University for processing and description, and from them have been distributed more than 27,000 samples to investigators worldwide. This article incorporates a bibliography covering all publications we have identified referring to results of analyses or other research based on samples from sediments collected by the Islas Orcadas programme.

This article summarizes voyages in the western Arctic of North America during four summers 1983–87, in an 18.3 m cutter-rigged steel motor cruiser, for the purpose of research into the history of commercial whaling, sealing and fur trading. Use of a small, self-sufficient sea-going boat allows access into the small harbours and coves where relics of commerce from the sailing-ship and early steam-ship eras are mostly found.

From 14 November to 12 December 1986 a five-man team surveyed Ile des Pingouins, an islandin the lies Crozet archipelago only once previously visited by scientists. Supported by Terres Australes et Antarctiques Francaises (TAAF), the team investigated the geology, climate, botany, invertebrate zoology and ornithology of the island.

Place names in the Hughes Bay area, Danco Coast, Antarctica well illustrate naming problems that give rise to confusion or ambiguity. This note shows the origins of conflicting place names, providing a warning to scientists and others and a key of foreign equivalents to some of the names accepted for British official use.

We regret that, in our review Pôle Nord: Histoire de sa conquête et problèmes contremporains de navigation maritime et aérienne (Polar Record 24 (149): 141), the name of one of the authors, J. Malaurie, was mis-spelt.