1912] THE RAT PEST 267 
the running of a line of soundings from Banks Peninsula to a 
point in Lat. 60° S., Long. 170° W. ‘Thence the ship was to 
proceed due south until the pack was reached, sounding twice 
daily. After entering the pack she was to continue to force her 
way southward, keeping approximately on the meridian of 
165° W., to sound over the less known portions of the Ross Sea, 
and to determine the nature and extent of the pack ice in this un- 
explored region. 
The earlier southern voyages had mostly been made in more 
westerly longitudes. 
In conjunction with the ambitious deep sea sounding pro- 
gramme Lillie was to make a number of quantitative plankton 
stations, and obtain trawls whenever the occasion was suitable. 
We also hoped to add materially to our magnetic observations 
for Variation, Dip and Total Force. 
The programme was fairly well adhered to, and thanks to 
Rennick’s expert handling of the Lucas machine we obtained 
several soundings of about 3000 fathoms, when less ardent hy- 
drographers would have surrendered to the bad weather. 
On December 17 the Antipodes Islands were passed, the ship 
labouring in the heavy sea and occasionally rolling 
Dec. 17, : - 5 
ee her bulwarks under; it was not considered advisable 
z2' S.,178° to attempt a landing. These islands are visited twice 
tae a year by a government steamer, and have been ex- 
amined pretty thoroughly, although rather sketchily surveyed. 
On this voyage the ship was infested with rats, but Cheetham, 
our boatswain, who has crossed the Antarctic circle fourteen 
times, showed himself an adept at rat-catching and soon freed 
the ship from the pest. He used to throw the rats over the side, 
and the albatrosses and mollymawks would swoop down and 
devour the vermin in an incredibly short time. We had all kinds 
of rat-traps in use, and even used mouse-traps to catch the young. 
On December 26, in Lat. 63° S., we passed the first iceberg 
of the voyage, an old disrupted berg, and as we ad- 
Le vanced southward all kinds of icebergs were to be 
°0 se seen. ‘The ice-log shows a greater number and va- 
riety of bergs on this than on the two preceding 
voyages. 
The great belt of Antarctic pack ice was not reached until 
December 29, when we had attained the 69th parallel. 
