NOVEMBER 29, 1906| 
NATURE 
103 
Photography in Natural Colours. 
In Nature of October 4 (p. 571) you referred to the 
fact that the new method of photography in natural 
colours described by Prof. Lippmann in the Comptes rendus 
of July 30 had been forestalled by myself and published 
in the British Journal of Photography, January 1, 1904. 
It is now my turn to disclaim priority, for Mr. F. Cheshire, 
who wrote you on the subject before, has just found, and 
kindly brought to my notice, a patent taken out by Mr. 
F. W. Lanchester, of Alvechurch, dated 1895, which de- 
scribes to all intents and purposes the same arrangement. 
Not less curious is the fact that between the times of my 
own and Prof. Lippmann’s publications, another French 
investigator, M. A. Cheron, devised the same method and 
obtained a French patent for the same early this year, and 
another French worker, M. Raymond, has, according to 
M. Cheron’s communication to this month’s number of 
La Photographie des Couleurs, been apparently working 
on the same lines. 
We have here, therefore, the strange coincidence of five 
different people quite independently inventing the same 
method. Jurtus RHEINBERG. 
16 Coolhurst Road, Crouch End, N., November 24. 
ANTARCTIC EXPLORATION.* 
HE story of the Antarctic is longer in time than 
in materials, for the necessary existence of 
lands around the South Pole was affirmed by some 
of the earliest geographers. There was abundant 
speculation about the character of these South Polar 
lands and the impossibility of reaching them before 
Bouvet found his islet and Cook was convinced of 
the existence of a great southern continent. The 
Antarctic regions have furnished less dramatic in- 
cident and fewer commercial returns than the Arctic, 
but they have probably given, in proportion to the 
efforts devoted to them, more wide-reaching scientific 
results. Dr. Mill’s book gives a full and graphic 
sketch of the whole subject. It summarises the 
classical and medizeval speculations, tells the narra- 
tives, and explains the results of all the expeditions 
that have worked in the Antarctic. It handles the 
many branches of the subject—oceanography, terres- 
trial magnetism, topography, and bibliography—with 
expert knowledge, an intimate acquaintance with the 
scattered literature, and high literary skill. The story 
is enlivened by pithy anecdotes, and gives lucid 
explanations of the scientific problems, so that the 
book is as interesting as it is instructive. It tells us, 
for example, of the cost of various expeditions. Thus 
Cook’s great results were achieved for 20,o00l1., and 
the Belgica Expedition gained its rich harvest for 
only 12,0001. It helps us to place the explorers, by 
other incidents in their lives, such as Dumont 
d’Urville’s discovery of the Venus of Milo, Maury’s 
service in the Confederate Navy, Willkes’s achieve- 
ments on behalf of the Northern States in the same 
war, and his famous arrest of the Trent. The 
literary history is enlivened by many items of biblio- 
graphic interest, such as the mythical author 
““H. M. S. Slaney,’’ the recovery of the remarkable 
appeal to the Geographical Society in 1837 on behalf 
of Antarctic research by “fA. L.,”? from a French 
translation, and the loss of Enderberg’s MS. in one 
of the London Society’s libraries. 
The siege of the South Pole has been conducted 
by campaigns at three periods. The first period 
began in the time of Drake, who reached 57° S. lat., 
1 “The Siege of the South Pole, the Story of Antarctic Exploration.” 
By Dr. Hugh Robert Mill. Pp. xvi+455; with maps and illustrations. 
(London: Alston Rivers, Ltd., 1905.) 
“The Voyage of the Scot7a. Being the Record of a Vovage of Explora- 
tion in Antarctic Seas.” By Three of the Staff. Pp. xxiv+375; with three 
maps and numerous illustrations. (Edinburgh and London: Wm. Black- 
wood and Sons, 1906.) Price 21s. net. 
NO. 1935, VOL. 75] 
and of de Quiros, who proclaimed his annexation 
‘*in the name of the Holy Trinity of all islands and 
lands which I have recently discovered and will dis- 
cover even to the Pole.’’ The great achievement of 
this period was the voyage of Cook, whom Dr. Mill 
regards as the hero of Antarctic work. He describes 
him as ‘‘ the greatest of British maritime explorers, 
the one man who could be compared with Columbus 
and Magellan.’’ He deplores that the only reward 
he received after his Antarctic voyage for ‘his 
stupendous service to science and his country, was a 
step in naval rank’; and he reminds us of the almost 
incredible fact that ‘‘ Cook’s own log was actually 
left unpublished for 130 years, while, incredible as 
it may seem, the description of some of the scientific 
collections of the voyage with the plates engraved 
at the time are only now appearing in the twentieth 
century.’’ Cook’s work showed that the Antarctic 
continent was confined within narrower limits than 
had previously been thought, but Cook, though he 
did not actually land on Antarctica, was emphatic as 
to its existence. More definite knowledge of the 
Antarctic continent was obtained by the explorers of 
the second period, that of Bellingshausen, Weddell, 
Biscoe, Wilkes, and Ross. It is to the work of that 
period that we owe most of the data that enabled 
Sir John Murray, after the dredging of the Challenger 
had given the geological proof of the continental 
structure of the Antarctic lands, to prepare the out- 
line map of Antarctica, which, as Dr. Mill tells us, 
“subsequent discovery has not as yet materially 
modified.’? The active research of the second period 
was brought to a sudden and complete stop; the 
siege was raised for sixty years. The abandonment 
of the work was perhaps partly due to the disgust 
at the quarrels in America over the Wilkes Expedi- 
tion, and at the feud between Wilkes and Ross; but 
Dr. Mill attributes it mainly to the concentration of 
attention in the Arctic, im consequence of the 
Franklin tragedy, Ross’s voyage naturally receives 
the fullest treatment, owing to its important results. 
Great though they were, they might easily have been 
greater, for Dr. Mill, who has had personal experi- 
ence of scientific research in naval vessels, remarks 
that ‘the average naval officer understands some- 
thing of physical observations, but the collection of 
geological and natural history specimens is a mystery 
to him, and he abhors such mysteries ’’; and he de- 
scribes how McCormick was hampered in his attempts 
to make zoological collections, and the misleading 
influence of Ross’s theories, based on his mistaking 
records of pressure for deep-sea temperatures. Had 
Ross’s expedition, says the author, ‘‘ been organised 
on the lines subsequently followed on that of the 
Challenger the gain to science would have been 
enormous.”’ 
The third period includes the Antarctic research of 
recent years. The long agitation for the renewal of 
the work is fully told by Dr. Mill, from the appeal 
by Maury to the Geographical Society in 1860, and 
the persistent efforts of Neumayr, who was promised 
the leadership of an expedition from Hamburg in 
1870, which was stopped by the Franco-German War; 
he records the ‘* snubbed proposals ’’ of the Australian 
colonies, the suggested Australian-Swedish expedi- 
tion, and the resumption of Antarctic research by the 
whalers, by Dallmann in 1873, the Balaena with 
W. S. Bruce in 1892, the Jason under Larsen, and 
especially the Antarctic, sent by Sven Foyn in 1894 
to the Ross Sea. These commercial enterprises re- 
aroused the public interest in the Antarctic, and led 
to the despatch of the British, German, Belgian, 
Swedish, and French expeditions of the opening of 
this century, the results of which are now in course 
