NEVER AGAIN 567 



which always welcomed them in. It commanded McMurdo 

 Sound on one side, where they had lived : and the Barrier 

 on the other, where they had died. No more fitting pedestal, 

 a pedestal which in itself is nearly 1000 feet high, could 

 have been found. 



" Tuesday, January 22. Rousing out at 6 a.m. we got 

 the large piece of the cross up Observation Hill by 1 1 a.m. 

 It was a heavy job, and the ice was looking very bad all 

 round, and I for one was glad when we had got it up by 

 5 o'clock or so. It is really magnificent, and will be a per- 

 manent memorial which could be seen from the ship nine 

 miles off with a naked eye. It stands nine feet out of the 

 rocks, and many feet into the ground, and I do not believe 

 it will ever move. When it was up, facing out over the 

 Barrier, we gave three cheers and one more." 



We got back to the ship all right and coasted up the 

 Western Mountains to Granite Harbour; a wonderfully 

 interesting trip to those of us who had only seen these 

 mountains from a distance. Gran went off to pick up a 

 depot of geological specimens. Lillie did a trawl. 



This was an absorbing business, though it was only one 

 of a long and important series made during the voyages of 

 the Terra Nova. Here were all kinds of sponges, siliceous, 

 glass rope, tubular, and they were generally covered with 

 mucus. Some fed on diatoms so minute that they can only be 

 collected by centrifuge : some have gastric juices to dissolve 

 the siliceous skeletons of the diatoms on which they feed : 

 they anchor themselves in the mud and pass water in and 

 out of their bodies : sometimes the current is stimulated by 

 cilia. There were colonies of Gorgonacea, which share their 

 food unselfishly; and corals and marine degenerate worms, 

 which started to live in little cells like coral, but have gone 

 down in the world. And there were starfishes, sea-urchins, 

 brittle-stars, feather-stars and sea-cucumbers. The sea- 

 urchins are formed of hexagonal plates, the centre of each 

 of which is a ball, upon which a spine works on a ball and 

 socket joint. These spines are used for protection, and 

 when large they can be used for locomotion. But the real 

 means of locomotion are five double rows of water-tube 



