158 president's address. 



party of about ten men should be landed somewhere to the South 

 of Cape Horn, probably about Bismarck Strait at Graham's Land. 

 The expedition should then proceed to Victoria Land, where a 

 second similar party should winter, probably in Macmurdo Bay, 

 near Mount Erebus. The ships should not become frozen in, nor 

 attempt to winter in the far south, but should return towards the 

 north, conducting observations of various kinds along the outer 

 margins of the ice. After the needful rest and outfit at the 

 Falk lands or Australia, the position of the ice and the temperature 

 of the ocean should be observed in the early spring, and later the 

 wintering parties should be communicated with, and, if necessary, 

 reinforced with men and supplies for another winter. During the 

 second winter the deep-sea observations should be continued 

 northwards, and in the third season the wintering parties should 

 be picked up and the expedition return to England. The winter- 

 ing parties might largely be composed of civilians, and one or two 

 civilians might be attached to each ship ; this plan worked 

 admirably during the Challeriger exjDedition." 



" What, it may be asked, would be the advantages to trade and 

 commerce of such an expedition '? It must be confessed that no 

 definite or very encouraging answer can be given. We know of 

 no extensive fisheries in these regions. For a long time seal and 

 sea-elephant fisheries have been carried on about the islands of 

 the Southern Ocean, l)ut we have no indication of large herds or 

 rookeries within the Antarctic Circle. A whale fishery was at one 

 time carried on in the neighbourhood of Kerguelen, but this 

 right whale, if distinct from or identical with Balcena aicstralis, 

 appears to have become nearly, if not quite, extinct. Some 

 expressions of Ross would lead one to suppose that a whale cor- 

 responding to the Greenland right whale inhabits the seas within 

 the Antarctic ice, but we have no definite knowledge of the exis- 

 tence of such a species. Although "sulphur-bottoms" (Balcf^- 

 'noptera musculus), " finbacks" {Bahenoptera Sihhaldn), and 

 " humpbacks" (Megaptera boops) are undoubtedly abundant, they 

 do not repay capture. Ross and McCormick report the sperm 

 whale within the Antarctic ice, but there is still some douljt on 



