220 WITH SCOTT : THE SILVER LINING 



and fell into my sponge with great accuracy, and as if it were 

 accustomed to do so ! 



When the chest was thereafter freed from my ablutions, it 

 was seized by Debenham as a petrological laboratory. For 

 hours he might be observed rubbing down fragments of rocks 

 on a glass plate with carborundum powder. 



He had a microscope, and was able to examine the many 

 thin sections thus produced without awaiting his return to 

 civilization. It is most interesting to see a dark rock gradually 

 becoming transparent as the section gets thinner. First the 

 quartz and felspar show up like clear and milky glass respec- 

 tively. Then the green or brown colours of the mica horn- 

 blende or augite appear, while the characteristic green fringes 

 to the clear olivine crystals or the absolute opacity of mag- 

 netite define those minerals. And then under the polarized 

 light of the microscope even the colourless minerals show 

 wonderful colours — from the pale greys and yellows of quartz 

 and felspar to the vivid blue and purple of the olivine and 

 pink and neutral tints of white mica. 



Thus Debenham classified the numerous rocks from the 

 western mountains. Kenytes rich in lozenge crystals of a 

 beautifully banded felspar ; granites showing brown cleaved 

 crystals of hornblende and mica among the quartz grains and 

 simple felspars ; basalts with numerous crystals of olivine and 

 magnetite in a felted mass of little felspar laths — gneisses, 

 granulites, etc., etc., each and all can be pigeon-holed by 

 picking out the relative proportions of the few minerals 

 specified above. 



By far the most interesting instrument in the hut — 

 consulted by scientist and layman alike — was the " blizzo- 

 meter." Such was the name we used for " Dines Pressure- 

 tube Anemometer." We could all see a roll of paper 

 on a rotating drum, on which a pen was always scratch- 

 ing lines giving wind velocity. But the expert could tell lots 

 more. He could say not only how heavy each individual 

 gust had been during the past twenty-four hours, but he could 

 tell from the character of the graph whether the wind were 

 from the north or south, and, more awkward still, he could 

 tell when the night watchman had neglected his duty and let 

 the inlet become choked with drift ! 



You could not bluff Simpson or the blizzometer. The 



