JJ^y*] Taylor, A Scientist in the Antarctic, 5 



A SCIENTIST IN THE ANTARCTIC. 



By Dr. Griffith Taylor, B.E., B.A., F.G.S., F.R.G.S., 



Physiographer, Commonwealth Bureau of Meteorology. 

 {Read before the Field Naturalists' Club of Victoria, nth Nov., 191 8.) 

 Captain Scott's last expedition left New Zealand on the 26th 

 November, 1910. Dr. E. A. Wilson, already known for his 

 Antarctic labours, was chief of the scientific staff, which con- 

 tained four other scientists from Cambridge. Dr. Simpson, 

 from India, was in charge of the meteorology, while there were 

 three geologists, five biologists, and a physicist in the expedi- 

 tion. Most of the naval officers also took a great interest in 

 the scientific work, and our leader himself was a keen student 

 of the chief features of the Antarctic environment, as his paper on 

 the Ice Barrier (for the Royal Geographical Society) clearly shows. 



On the voyage to Cape Evans — which occupied five weeks 

 — the biologists were perhaps the busiest scientists. But the 

 study of the bergs and floe ice, together with the sounding 

 work, gave the geologists much to do. The bergs were driven 

 by the blizzards farther north than the floe ice. They were 

 usually huge tabular sheets torn off from the Great Barrier ; 

 but irregular or pinnacled bergs were not uncommon, and 

 these were derived partly from glacier snouts and partly from 

 disintegrated barrier bergs. One of the most interesting was 

 about a mile long, and had originally been tabular. All along 

 the face were enormous vertical joints, broadening into sea- 

 caves below. These had split the berg into columns, so that 

 it was wonderful how it held together ; but probably the portion 

 under water had not been eroded by the waves, and still 

 remained fairly solid. At each end was an isolated pillar, a 

 hundred feet away from the main mass, and over a hundred 

 feet high. It exactly resembled the classic geological example 

 of weathering known as " The Old Man of Hoy." 



We were imprisoned in pack ice for nearly three weeks, and 

 here made acquaintance with some of the characteristic 

 Antarctic fauna. Snow-Petrels and other sea-birds flew around 

 the rigging, and were occasionally caught by Wilson and 

 Cherry-Garrard in loose snares. Others were shot and 

 retrieved in the dinghy. It was queer work navigating the floes. 

 Many were too slushy to stand on and yet too solid to admit 

 of the boat's passage, so that some of our specimens were 

 perforce abandoned. A few crab-eater seals were shot, and 

 we found it a laborious job to get their heavy, unmanageable 

 carcases aboard. They live on small Crustacea chiefly, and 

 their ferocious-looking fanged teeth act only as sifters to free 

 the shrimps from the water ; they are, therefore, in function, 

 akin to the whale's baleen, Wilson set up a " flensing " table 



