BOSS AS DISCOVEEEB 55 



volcano, and a hundred problems of great interest to the 

 geographer ; in this unique region he carried out scientific 

 research in every possible department, and by unremitted 

 labour succeeded in collecting material which until quite 

 lately has constituted almost the exclusive source of our 

 knowledge of magnetic conditions in the higher southern 

 latitudes. It might be said that it was James Cook who 

 denned the Antarctic Kegion, and James Eoss who dis- 

 covered it. 



For over half a century the expedition held the record for 

 * furthest South ' and it was from the land Eoss discovered 

 that Scott, Shackleton, Amundsen, and again Scott set forth 

 on their great Southern journeys. The regions beyond the 

 Antarctic Circle yielded next to nothing to the botanist : 

 they were barren far beyond the barrenness of the Arctic Zone. 

 A seaweed was only once found floating within the Antarctic 

 Circle. At Cockburn Island one sole lichen was found, painting 

 the exposed rocks with red and orange a lichen, strangely 

 enough, abundant in the Arctic, and next seen by Hooker on 

 desolate summits of the Upper Himalayas, over against the 

 Tibetan Plateau. 



The sea, however, had other harvests, and as elsewhere 

 Hooker, unable to botanise, or not wholly engrossed in working 

 at his collections, studied the floating creatures brought in by 

 the tow-net or dredge, establishing for the first time the occur- 

 rence of highly developed animal life at a depth of 400 fathoms, 

 so here he determined the presence of abundant infusoria in 

 the icy waters, which provided the ultimate means of sub- 

 sistence for higher forms. Multitudes of small shrimps fed 

 upon them, and supported abundance of whales : they were, 

 moreover, eaten by the fish ; while birds and seals lived upon 

 both and were themselves the prey of the killer- whales. 



This zoological interest appears from the very outset of 

 the voyage and continues to the end, though of the third trip 

 to the South he is compelled to write : ' Amongst the animals 

 very little or nothing has been done. I lost all my gauze in 

 the pack from the water being so full of little pieces of ice, and in 

 the clear water it has alw^s been blowing with heavy seas on. 5 



