NEVER AGAIN 569 



the highly developed projections which act as legs, by 

 which they get about the mud. These beasts have ap- 

 parently given rise to the Arthropods. In a modified and 

 later form they had taken to living in a tube, both for pro- 

 tection and because they found that they could not go 

 through the mud, which had become too viscous for them. 

 So they stand up in a tube and collect the sediment which 

 is falling by means of tentacles. They spread from one 

 locality to another by going through a plankton embryonic 

 stage in their youth. They may be compared to the mason 

 worms, which also build tubes. 



But as Lillie squatted on the poop surrounded by an 

 inner ring of jars and tangled masses of the catch, and an 

 outer ring of curious scientists, pseudo-scientists and sea- 

 men, no find pleased him so much as the frequent discovery 

 of pieces of Cephalodiscus rarus, of which even now there 

 are but some four jars full in the world. It is as interesting 

 as it is uncommon, for its ancestor was a link between the 

 vertebrates and invertebrates, though no one knows what 

 it was like. It has been a vertebrate and gone back, and 

 now has the signs of a notochord in early life, and it also 

 has gills. First found on the Graham's Land side of the Ant- 

 arctic continent, it has only recently been discovered in the 

 Ross Sea, and occurs nowhere else in the world so far as is 

 known. 



We left Granite Harbour in the early morning of 

 January 23, and started to make our way out. Our next 

 job was to pick up the geological specimens at Evans 

 Coves, where Campbell and his men had wintered in the 

 igloo, and also to leave a depot there for future explorers. 

 We met very heavy pack, having to return at least twelve 

 miles and try another way. " The sea has been freezing 

 out here, which seems an extraordinary thing at this time 

 of year. There was a thin layer of ice over the water be- 

 tween the floes this morning, and I feel sure that most of 

 these big level floes, of which we have seen several, are the 

 remains of ice which has frozen comparatively recently." 3 

 The propeller had a bad time, constantly catching up on 



1 My own diary. 



