I902] WORK OF THE OFFICERS 233 



cannot speak of any feature of the numerous hill-slopes and 

 valleys about our winter quarters without finding out that he 

 knows it well. 



' Skelton, our invaluable engineer, is also our photographer 

 in chief, and has had a great deal of work in sorting and 

 arranging the large numbers of photographs taken by various 

 members of the expedition ; the prints which he has already 

 managed to get together are extraordinarily interesting, and 

 if we can get good photographic results on our sledge journeys 

 our collection should be quite unique. But photography is 

 now the smallest part of Skelton's duties ; every officer in 

 every department has had need sooner or later to solicit his 

 services. The amount of mechanical work that is needed to 

 make good every defect in such an expedition as this is truly 

 surprising, and the work varies from the roughest to the most 

 delicate task ; without mechanical skill we should have been 

 hopelessly at sea, and it is not too much to say that the 

 majority of our scientific observations would have been 

 brought to a standstill. To give only a few instances of the 

 jobs which have been done of late sufficiently illustrates this 

 statement : a short while ago the clockwork of the Dyne's 

 recording anemometer refused to act, and it was found that 

 the hair-spring was rusted through ; the only spare escape- 

 ments were of a different pattern, but by drilling new holes 

 one was eventually fitted to the instrument, which has been 

 going continually since, though not of course at precisely the 

 same speed as it maintained before. 



' Last week, again, Hodgson found that his implements 

 were unsuited to digging the slushy ice in his fishing holes. 

 The only possible remedy was to forge new ones on a fresh 

 design, and of course this was done. Quite lately our 

 engineering skill has been called on for an extraordinarily 

 delicate task connected with the cover of the gravity apparatus. 

 This cover is placed over the pendulums, and its metal flange 

 is supposed to rest so truly on the base that it forms an air- 

 tight joint when the space beneath the cover is exhausted ; 

 on trial of our instrument, however, it was found that the 



