MAY. 



The usual monthly meeting of the members of the Royal Society was 

 held at the Museum on Monday, May 7, when the chair was occupied 

 by the Hon. C. H. Grant, M.L.C. 



Apologies were read from His Excellency the Governor and Mr. J. 

 Barnard, vice-president, for non-attendance. The Secretary said it would 

 be interesting to know that it was just 53 years this week since Mr. 

 James Barnard, its senior vice-president, was elected to membership, 

 hb nomination being seconded by Sir John Franklin. With the excep- 

 tion of the period when he was visiting England, Mr. Barnard had 

 seldom missed a meeting of the Council or the monthly gatherings 

 during his more than half century of membership. 



ANTARCTIC EXPLORATION. 



Mr. A. Mault read a paper on Antarctic Exploration. The subject, 

 he said, was no new one for the Society, as it? founder was the hero of 

 Arctic research, and one of its Fellows a distinguished explorer of the 

 Antarotic world. Detailing Sir James Ross' account of a storm he 

 encountered in the ice in 1842, the lecturer urged the great advantage 

 it would be in all future explorations to have steam insttad of sailing 

 vessels engaged in the wcrk. The most important woik had been 

 done by Weddell in 1823, and Ross in 1841 and 1842. Weddell crossed 

 the deep basin of the South Atlantic, and had fairly open water. 

 Ross' track took him across no such deep basin, but he also found what 

 the former experienced, the warm underlying current of water, which 

 had a temperature of 39deg. at 1,000 fathoms, against 30 for the surface. 

 At his farthest south, Ross found the warm water at the surface with a 

 temperature of 32deg. against an atmospheric temperature of 27deg., 

 and a sea bottom temperature at 250 fathoms of 33deg. The open sea 

 to be met with in the south was held to be largely due to the existence 

 of a line of seismic and volcanic action extending from New Zealand 

 to Mount Erebus. The knowledge of the Arctic region was of little 

 value in predication of the Antarctic conditions, the difference between 

 the two, especially in regard to meteorology, being entirely and unac- 

 countably different. The barometiic pressure, for instance, was much. 

 Jess in the south than in the north by about half an inch of mercury. 

 Then the Arctic region had a summer, but there was none in the 

 Antarctic so far as was known. The variations of the thermometer were 

 also very slight in the Southern Polar district. He quoted largely from 

 papers read before the Royal Geographical Societies, and concluded by 

 urging the advisability of prosecuting further researches in the Antarctic 

 regions. Commercially speaking he left to others, although he felt that 

 commerce always followed thorough scientific exploration. But the 

 scientific interests were so important as to fully justify their being 

 regarded as of such rational concern as to require a special expedition. 

 Tasmania in particular was interested in the matter of terrestrial 

 magnetism observations, and he hoped that renewed attention would 

 be giveD to the matter. His own opinion was that the exploration 

 should be carried out by the Royal Navy, and if it were done then one 

 of the vessels of the Australian squadron might very well be allowed to 

 take part in it. 



Captain Pascoe Crawford, R.N., said he was very in'erested in 

 the paper acd the subject matter, and quite concurred in the opinion 

 that the work of Antarctic exploration should be carried out by the 

 Royal Navy. There was a great deil to be done in the matter. In 

 previous expeditiens the ocean currents had been ol served, and the 

 result of the observations was of great value, but there was still a 

 mass of evidence to be collected on the sut ject. As regards Tasmania 

 and Australia, fresh and more elaborate, information on the currents 

 would be of much value me'.eorologica'ly. 



