234 WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD 
third? There can have been little doubt whom we both 
wanted, and that evening Bowers had been asked. Of 
course he was mad to come. And here we were. ‘This 
winter travel is a new and bold venture,” wrote Scott in 
the hut that night, “but the right men have gone to 
attempt it.” 
I don’t know. There never could have been any doubt 
about Bill and Birdie. Probably Lashly would have made 
the best third, but Bill had a prejudice against seamen for 
a journey like this—‘ They don’t take enough care of 
themselves, and they w#// not look after their clothes.” 
But Lashly was wonderful—if Scott had only taken a four- 
man party and Lashly to the Pole! 
What is this venture? Why is the embryo of the 
Emperor penguin so important to Science? And why 
should three sane and common-sense explorers be sledging 
away on a winter’s night to a Cape which has only been 
visited before in daylight, and then with very great difh- 
culty? 
ee explained more fully in the Introduction to this 
book? the knowledge the world possessed at this time of 
the Emperor penguin, mainly due to Wilson. But it is 
because the Emperor is probably the most primitive bird 
in existence that the working out of his embryology is so 
important. The embryo shows remains of the develop- 
ment of an animal in former ages and former states ; it re- 
capitulates its former lives. The embryo of an Emperor 
may prove the missing link between birds and the reptiles 
from which birds have sprung. 
Only one rookery of Emperor penguins had been 
found at this date, and this was on the sea-ice inside a 
little bay of the Barrier edge at Cape Crozier, which was 
guarded by miles of some of the biggest pressure in the 
Antarctic. Chicks had been found in September, and 
Wilson reckoned that the eggs must be laid in the begin- 
ning of July. And so we started just after midwinter on 
the weirdest bird’s-nesting expedition that has ever been or 
ever will be. 
1 See pp. xxxix-xlv. 
