338 DISCOVERY REPORTS 



sea-ice; nor did their troubles cease there, for owing to a mild winter the pack-ice 

 never became really consolidated but kept shifting about so that their route was often 

 a perilous one. In colder winters when the floes as a rule are firmly frozen and immovable 

 for a considerable distance around the group , communication with all parts could no doubt 

 be established over the sea-ice. Mossman, who experienced the mild winter of 1903 as 

 well as the rigours of the hard winter that followed, writes of the latter: "This season 

 all would have been different: the weather was remarkably fine for days together, and 

 the survey of Coronation Island, an impossibility last winter [1903] owing to the disturbed 

 ice conditions, would not only have been practicable but easy."^ It should further be 

 noted that although the route by the coast is fraught with obstacles, access to the high 

 interior, athwart the long axis of the group, may be had at many points both on Coronation 

 Island and Laurie Island byway of the glacier-filled depressions or gentler ice-slopes. 



Little of what has just been said, however, can be applied to Signy Island, because it 

 is comparatively ice-free, not very high, and possesses little of the rugged profile which 

 characterizes the group as a whole. There is far more level and low-lying ground than in 

 any other part of the group and the island may be traversed in all directions with little 

 difficulty. 



Fricker,^ basing his calculations on the crude maps of last century, estimated that the 

 area of Coronation Island was 560-625 square miles, and that of Laurie Island 235-312 

 square miles. Recent calculations, however, based on the chart which we made, place 

 the area of Coronation Island at about 130, and that of Laurie Island at about 25 square 

 miles, while the total area of the group is estimated to be in the neighbourhood of 175 

 square miles. 



In the spring innumerable sea birds come to the islands to nest and breed. They re- 

 main throughout the summer until autumn, scouring the surrounding seas for their 

 food. They are largely petrels of several kinds, and penguins. The latter to the number 

 of several millions occupy every available rocky site along the ice-bound coasts, filling 

 the air with tumult and trampling to extinction the scanty sea-board flora in the mud 

 and garbage of their rookeries. Seals of the several Antarctic species are scattered around 

 the coasts in moderate numbers from spring to autumn, sometimes congregated on the 

 fast ice which still lingers beyond the ice-foot in summer, sometimes in small rookeries 

 on one or other of the rare South Orkney beaches, but generally in twos or threes or 

 singly, on rocky shelves or on the stranded fragments from glacier cliffs and disrupting 

 icebergs. With the approach of winter, when access to their food supply is blocked or 

 largely curtailed by pack-ice, the birds and seals desert the islands and disperse to 

 more open water in the north. Under exceptional conditions the migration of the 

 penguins may be of such a fleeting nature that it may hardly be said to take place at all. 

 In 1908, according to Mossman,^ no pack-ice was seen in the neighbourhood of the 



^ The Voyage of the 'Scotia', p. 336. 



2 Fricker, K., 1900, The Antarctic Regions, Sonnenschein's translation, pp. 153-5 (London). 



3 Mossman, R. C, 1909, Meteorology at the South Orkneys and South Georgia in 1908, Scott. Geog. Mag., 

 XXV, No. 8, p. 409. 



