516 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



the ice had scraped up. The most common were a small, very 

 fragile bivalve, but there were other bivalves as well as snail 

 shells.* 



Traveling as we were many hundreds of miles away from the 

 nearest base where anything could be .safely stored, it was not 

 possible for us to bring home any specimens that were difficult to 

 preserve, such as the bodies of large animals or even their skins. 

 Charlie collected in his notebook many plant specimens, including 

 I believe, a sample of the lichens found on the earth ridge although 

 I also took samples of them. The only thing we could do further 

 was to preserve a few specimens in alcohol. On leaving the ship 

 we had taken with us a quantity of Horlick's malted milk, both 

 because it is a favorite food and because it was put up in one- 

 pound airtight tins which served a multitude of uses after they 

 had been emptied. Sometimes we used them for the protection of 

 records we left behind, knowing that these documents would be 

 safe till the tins rusted through. But perhaps the chief use was 

 as containers for alcohol which preserved small zoological speci- 

 mens. These were chiefly shrimps and such forms of floating life 

 as we found either in the ocean or in the stomachs of seals. We 

 paid particular attention to the intestinal and other parasites from 

 which the seal suffers and made something of a collection of these, 

 usually taking the parasite together with a piece of the skin or 

 membrane to which it was attached. 



* Discussions and identifications of these shells as well as of all the scien- 

 tific specimens gathered on the expedition have been or will be published by 

 the Department of Naval Service of Canada as part of the scientific reports 

 of the expedition, of which three volumes have been printed and fifteen vol- 

 umes are in preparation. In addition there will probably be other volumes 

 not yet mapped out. 



