INTRODUCTION XXV 
Black Island and Brown Island. Tosuppose them to be part 
of a line of continuous land was a very natural mistake. 
Ross broke through the pack ice into an unknown 
sea: he laid down many hundreds of miles of mountain- 
ous coast-line, and (with further work completed in 1842) 
some 400 miles of the Great Ice Barrier: he penetrated in 
his ships to the extraordinarily high latitude of 78° 11’ S., 
four degrees farther than Weddell. The scientific work of 
his expedition was no less worthy of praise. The South Mag- 
netic Pole was fixed with comparative accuracy, though 
Ross was disappointed in his natural but “‘ perhaps too am- 
bitious hope I had so long cherished of being permitted 
to plant the flag of my country on both the magnetic Poles 
of our globe.” 
Before all things he was at great pains to be accurate, 
both in his geographical and scientific observations, and 
his records of meteorology, water temperatures, soundings, 
as also those concerning the life in the oceans through 
which he passed, were not only frequent but trustworthy. 
When Ross returned to England in 1843 it was impos- 
sible not to believe that the case of those who advocated the 
existence of a South Polar continent was considerably 
strengthened. At the same time there was no proof that 
the various blocks of land which had been discovered were 
connected with one another. Even now in 1921, after 
twenty years of determined exploration aided by the most 
modern appliances, the interior of this supposed continent 
is entirely unknown and uncharted except in the Ross Sea 
area, while the fringes of the land are only discovered in 
perhaps a dozen places on a circumference of about eleven 
thousand miles. 
In his Life of Sir Joseph Hooker, Dr. Leonard Huxley 
has given us some interesting sidelights on this expedition 
under Ross. Hooker was the botanist of the expedition 
and assistant surgeon to the Erebus, being 22 years old 
when he left England in 1839. Natural history came off 
very badly in the matter of equipment from the Govern- 
ment, who provided twenty-five reams of paper, two botan- 
izing vascula and two cases for bringing home live plants : 
