IN WINTER QUARTERS WITH CAPTAIN SCOTT 303 



both due to Australians. Some one, I suspect Nelson, wove 

 Uncle Bill and myself into a " nightmare interview." There 

 were some beautiful photo plates by Ponting and three of 

 Wilson's inimitable Egyptian tablets ; besides various cartoons 

 and silhouettes by Wilson and Lillie. 



Guessing at the authors furnished considerable amuse- 

 ment. Even the astute Nelson fell in ! On p. 19 there is 

 a plan of the hut showing inter alia the engine in one corner. 

 Nelson made the rash statement that Uncle Bill had drawn 

 it the wrong way round. I immediately bet him that Bill 

 hadn't. Nelson went over to the engine and came back ready 

 to stake his life on it ! Then I told him that I had drawn 

 the plan ; so that Bill couldn't have made a mistake ! He 

 proceeded to say that he would have put me down as the 

 author of the a Bipes," only I was so unmercifully described 

 therein ; while Simpson amused me by assuring me that 

 Scott wrote the poem, " The Errant Sun." I gave the palm 

 to Nelson's poem on " Uncle Bill," " You are old, Uncle 

 William." 



Captain Scott was now preparing for a fortnight's sledge- 

 trip over to the west. He proposed to Simpson that he 

 should take this chance of some sledging, and so the meteor- 

 ology was left in my hands. Simpson kindly coached me in the 

 special minutiae, and I started the records on the nth (before 

 he left), so as to get into swing. 



Nelson gave us a particularly well-illustrated lecture on 

 the 11th on Invertebrates generally. 



He told us of the pleasant habit of the hydra which turns 

 itself inside out, and converts its skin into a stomach lining, 

 and vice versa ! He discussed the huge arthropod, remarkably 

 like a flea (but eight inches long), which Meares declared was 

 found in a bunk in the hut, though Ponting said he obtained 

 it on the beach. 



We envied the Pycnogonids (sea-spiders), which grow 

 an extra pair of legs in Antarctica, though they have only 

 eight in less strenuous latitudes. Two more limbs would 

 help us so greatly in sledging ! He called on me to lecture 

 on the corals, and I gave a brief account of the biology 

 of the forerunners of this family (the Archeocyathin<e\ 

 which occur fossil on the Beardmore Glacier. I discussed 

 Darwin's and Murray's theories with special reference to my 



