THE LAST WINTER 457 



fact that these runners were fitted at home. The effect 

 of this is that the wood shrinks and the German silver is 

 not quite flat : the fitting should be done on the spot. 

 Nansen did this himself on the Fram, and the result was 

 excellent. [I believe that these Discovery runners were not 

 a continuous strip of metal but were built up in strips, 

 which tore at the points of junction.] Before it is fitted, 

 German silver should be heated red hot and allowed to 

 cool. This makes it more ductile, like lead, and therefore 

 less springy: the metal should be as thin as possible. 



As runners melt the crystals and so run on water, metal 

 is unsuitable for cold snow. For low temperatures, therefore, 

 Nansen would have wooden runners under the metal, the 

 metal being taken off when cold conditions obtained. He 

 would choose such wood as is the best conductor of heat. He 

 tried birch wood in the first crossing of Greenland, but would 

 not recommend it as being too easily broken. In the use of 

 oak, ash, maple, and doubtless also hickory, for runners, 

 the rings of growth of the tree should be as far apart as 

 possible : that is to say, they should be fast growing. Ash 

 with narrow rings breaks. There is ash and ash : American 

 ash is no good for this purpose ; some Norwegian ash is 

 useful, and some not. Our own sledges with ash runners 

 varied enormously. The runners of a sledge should curve 

 slightly, the centre being nearest to the snow. The runners 

 of ski should curve also slightly, in this case upwards in the 

 centre, i.e. from the snow. This is done by the way the wood 

 is cut. Wood always dries with the curve from the heart 

 towards the outside of the tree. 



During our last year we had six new Norwegian sledges 

 twelve feet long, brought down by the ship, with tapered 

 runners of hickory which were 3§ inches broad in the fore 

 part and l\ inches only at the stern. I believe that this was 

 an idea of Scott, who considered that the broad runner in 

 front would press down a path for the tapered part which 

 followed, the total area of friction being much less. We 

 took one of them into South Bay one morning and tried it 

 againstan ordinarysledge,putting49olbs.on each of them. 

 The surface included fairly soft as well as harder and more 



