INTRODUCTION XXV11 
stantly on the alert to snatch the most trifling opportunities 
of adding to the collection. ...” 
Finally, we have a picture of the secrecy which was 1m- 
posed upon all with regard to the news they should write 
home and the precautions against any leakage of scientific 
results. And we see Hooker jumping down the main hatch 
with a penguin skin in his hand which he was preparing for 
himself, when Ross came up the after hatch unexpectedly. 
That has happened on the Terra Nova! 
Ross had a cold reception on his return, and Scott wrote 
to Hooker in 1905: 
“ At first it seems inexplicable when one considers how 
highly his work is now appreciated. From the point of 
view of the general public, however, I have always thought 
that Ross was neglected, and as you once said he is very 
far from doing himself justice in his book. I did not know 
that Barrow was the béte noire who did so much to dis- 
count Ross’s results. It is an interesting sidelight on such 
a venture.” 1 
In discussing and urging the importance of the Ant- 
arctic Expedition which was finally sent under Scott in the 
Discovery, Hooker urged the importance of work in the 
South Polar Ocean, which swarms with animal and vege- 
table life. Commenting upon the fact that the large collec- 
tions made chiefly by himself had never been worked out, 
except the diatoms, he writes: 
‘““A better fate, I trust, awaits the treasures that the 
hoped-for Expedition will bring back, for so prolific is the 
ocean that the naturalist need never be idle, no, not even 
for one of the twenty-four hours of daylight during a whole 
Antarctic summer, and I look to the results of a comparison 
of the oceanic life of the Arctic and Antarctic regions as 
the heralding of an epoch in the history of biology.” ? 
When Ross went to the Antarctic it was generally 
thought that there was neither food nor oxygen nor light 
in the depths of the ocean, and that therefore there was no 
life. Among other things the investigations of Ross gave 
1 Leonard Huxley, Life of Sir %. D. Hooker, vol. ii. p. 4.4.3. 
2 Tbid. p. 4.41. 
