1902] FOOD- VALUE OF SEAL- MEAT 403 



the original weight. Raw meat contains about 75 per cent, of 

 moisture, and we estimated our margarine to contain about 20 

 per cent. ; so speaking very roughly, something under three- 

 quarters of the original weight of our seal and margarine was 

 water. 



Again very roughly, therefore, in the cooked meat which 

 remained there was water equal to about a twelfth of its 

 original weight, or about a fourth of its present weight. We 

 estimated that we eventually reduced this moisture to 20 per 

 cent., and in this state we calculated that 12 lbs. of seal-meat 

 was equal to 10 lbs. of pemmican. 



' October 20 {continued). — . . . We have come to the end 

 of our fresh mutton, except a small quantity kept for possible 

 sickness ; this makes a difference to Sunday, but our seal-meat 

 is now so well served that the loss is not greatly felt. In this 

 matter of seal-meat there has been an extraordinary change 

 throughout the ship. There is no getting over the fact that 

 none of us really enjoyed the seal in the winter, and when 

 tinned meat was stopped there were not a few downcast faces ; 

 but within a fortnight all that has been altered : everyone now 

 eats the seal with relish, and I do not think there is a single 

 man who would go back to tinned meat, even if he had the 

 chance. The consumption is so great that we have all our work 

 to keep up the supply, and appetites seem to be increasing 

 rather than lessening. Somewhere in this, but not wholly 

 revealed, lies the root of our scurvy trouble ; one would fain 

 be able to trace it more clearly.' 



In the extracts which I have given from my diary it is 

 possible to trace the history of our scurvy from its outbreak to 

 the time when it vanished from amongst us, but they show 

 also that we were in the unsatisfactory state of being unable to 

 trace the cause of the evil, and in that state we still remain, 

 for amongst ihe various circumstances of our daily life we can 

 find none that definitely contributed to it. The surprise 

 which this unpleasant discovery brought us has not been 

 lessened by time. We are still unconscious of any element in 

 our surroundings which might have fostered the disease, or of 



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