lo Taylor, A Scientist in the Antarctic^ [voT.'^xxx\ 



Sounding balloons were sent up to chart the upper air. They 

 carried meteorographs, which recorded temperature pressure 

 and humidity, and also a fine silk thread, which, like Penelope's 

 web, was supposed to lead one to the fallen treasure ; but either 

 the thread had snapped on an icy pinnacle or else the instru- 

 ment had drifted over the open water or other accident had 

 supervened. Few of us claimed the chocolate allotted to the 

 successful tracker, but Simpson obtained sufficient records to 

 add greatly to our knowledge of Antarctic aerology. 



Lieutenants Evans and Gran spent the spring months in a 

 theodolite survey of the whole vicinity. Debenham and I 

 plane-tabled Cape Evans — one of the coldest jobs I have ever 

 tackled. One could hardly draw accurate lines muffled up 

 as comfort required, and with temperatures of —40° thin 

 gloves soon meant torture. 



Through the sleeping hours the night-watchman {i.e., each 

 of the officers in rotation) kept watch in and around the hut. 

 He would cast an eye to the east and see a glow over the crater 

 of Erebus. To the south and east the dancing curtains of 

 the Aurora often flashed across the sky. Usually they were 

 grey or palest green, and were never so vivid as they appear 

 in more northern regions. In foul weather, which occurred 

 five days in the week, it would often be his unpleasant duty to 

 free the pressure-anemometer (" bhzzometer ") from the 

 bUzzard snow. Picture hifn muffled up and carrying an electric 

 torch round the hut to the base of a frozen ladder. Up this 

 he creeps in the teeth of a gale at seventy miles an hour. Sheets 

 of snow drive past him into the bay, and seem to rock the roof 

 across which he straddles. Here projects the tube of the 

 " bhzzometer," and it is his unpleasant duty to excavate the 

 snow therein until the tube is clear and the " bhzzometer " 

 registering again. He returns to the shelter of the hut, knowing 

 that it will probably be his lot to repeat the performance before 

 his watch is over. 



So passed the long ni^it. Almost all the survivors of the 

 expedition reached England in 1913. The scientific work was 

 put in hand at once, and is being published by the British 

 Museum ; but the Great War has naturally prevented any 

 large output to date. However, nearly a dozen quarto memoirs, 

 dealing with marine biology, penguins, whales, algae, fossils, 

 &c., have already been pubhshed ; and, now that the war is 

 happily over, science will come again to her own, and the 

 publication of the scientific results of Captain Scott's last 

 expedition will proceed apace. 



[The paper was illustrated bv a large series of lantern shdes. 

 —Ed. Vict. Nat.] 



