In Rome in the year 1555 a book, written by Olaus Magnus, the Archbishop of Upsala, and Primate of Suetia and Gothia, was published to the world with a fine resounding title. It claimed to be “A History of the Northern Peoples, their different states, conditions, manners, ceremonies, superstitions, training, mode of life, diet, methods of warfare, buildings, tools, mines, and marvels, and also of nearly all the animals that dwell in the North and of their nature. A work, which while varied and crammed with information on many subjects, with examples drawn from other countries and with printed pictures of native affairs, is also full of delight and entertainment, easily flooding the mind of the reader with the greatest pleasure. With a very full index.”—full indeed, for it extends over sixty-five pages. The writer of this remarkable volume, Olaus Magnus, was born at Linköping in 1490, and knew his northern countries well, as became a former canon of Upsala. But already the Reformation was beginning to disturb those parts, and from 1527 onwards Olaus spent most of his time in Rome, so that his Archbishopric of Upsala and Primateship were titular only. This may serve to explain some references to the Lutheranorum detestabilis impostura or to the temeraria praesumptio of the Lutherans, whom he regards as the “spreaders of every kind of crime and impurity”.

The following place-names in the South Orkney Islands and the Antarctic Continent were proposed by Dr W. S. Bruce; they were first published in the maps accompanying his paper in the Scottish Geographical Magazine for June 1905, and in the Reports on the Scientific Results of the Voyage of S.Y. Scotia, 1902–04 (Edinburgh, 1907–).

Studies of the avenues by which heat is lost from the human body are of basic importance in the understanding of man's reaction to a polar climate. The following notes aim to draw attention to some of the more important physiological work that has recently been published in this field.

The following notes are based on impressions gained during my stay among Eskimo and European trappers at Clavering Øya, North-East Greenland, in 1939–40. Much attention has been focused on the problem of sledge dogs by European trappers, for during the trapping season they have to depend on their dogs because of the long distances that have to be covered. In an attempt to develop a new type of sledge dog, with the endurance of a Greenland Husky and the speed of an Alsatian, many attempts have been made during the last ten years to breed dogs with these special qualities in view.