232 SCOTT'S LAST EXPEDITION [June 



that the small uptake on the stove pipe was closed. I think it 

 would be good to have a renewal of air at bed time, but don't 

 quite know how to manage this. 



It was calm all night and when I left the hut at 8.30. At 

 9 the wind suddenly rose to 40 m.p.h. and at the same moment 

 the temperature rose io. The wind and temperature curves 

 show this sudden simultaneous change more clearly than usual. 

 The curious circumstance is that this blow comes out of a clear 

 sky. This will be disturbing to our theories unless the wind 

 drops again very soon. 



The wind fell within an hour almost as suddenly as it had 

 arisen; the temperature followed, only a little more gradually. 

 One may well wonder how such a phenomenon is possible. In 

 the middle of a period of placid calm and out of a clear sky 

 there suddenly rushed upon one this volume of comparatively 

 warm air; it has come and gone like the whirlwind. 



Whence comes it and whither goeth? 



Went round the bergs after lunch on ski splendid surface 

 and quite a good light. 



We are now getting good records with the tide gauge after 

 a great deal of trouble. Day has given much of his time to the 

 matter, and after a good deal of discussion has pretty well mas- 

 tered the principles. We brought a self-recording instrument 

 from New Zealand, but this was passed over to Campbell. It 

 has not been an easy matter to manufacture one for our own 

 use. The wire from the bottom weight is led through a tube 

 filled with paraffin as in Discovery days, and kept tight by a 

 counter weight after passage through a block on a stanchion 

 rising 6 feet above the floe. 



In his first instrument Day arranged for this wire to pass 

 around a pulley, the revolution of which actuated the pen of the 

 recording drum. This should have been successful but for the 

 difficulty of making good mechanical connection between the 

 recorder and the pulley. Backlash caused an unreliable record, 

 and this arrangement had to be abandoned. The motion of the 

 wire was then made to actuate the recorder through a hinged 

 lever, and this arrangement holds, but days and even weeks have 

 been lost in grappling the difficulties of adjustment between the 

 limits of the tide and those of the recording drum; then when 

 all seemed well we found that the floe was not rising uniformly 



