PuRNELL.—On Antarctic Exploration, 31 
[Norz.—Mill makes a note that the reviewer in the Edinburgh Review, 
(October, 1844), suggested a definition of implements very similar to that 
which I have proposed, but I have not been able to procure a copy of the 
review. See Book I., chap. ii., sec. 4.) 
Art. IL.—0On Antarctic Exploration. By C. W. Puryett. 
[Read before the Otago Institute, 14th May, 1878.] 
In a presidential address delivered to the members of this Institute, in 
February, 1875, Mr. J. T. Thomson eursorily alluded to the subject of 
antarctic exploration. This subject had been under my own notice for 
some time previously, and I should probably have asked permission to 
read a paper upon it but for Mr. Thomson's remarks, which seemed to 
render it needless for me to do so just then. Other persons, I dare say, 
have had their attention directed to so fascinating a topie, although, after 
searching such official records of the proceedings of the different Philoso- 
phieal Societies in the Australian colonies as are available, I have been 
unable to discover any paper dealing with it, or any allusion whatever 
to the matter, save that contained in Mr. Thomson’s address. Yet it 
- seems to me that there is no subject better fitted for the consideration of 
& scientific society in these colonies, and more partieularly of the Otago 
Institute, than the best means of exploring the South Polar Seas. They 
form a weird and strange region almost unknown to man. They have been 
unvisited by any exploring expedition since 1843; and no discoveries appear 
to have been made by whaling vessels, or at all events none have been 
recorded, to supplement those of Sir James Ross; so that, while during 
the last five-and-thirty years our knowledge of the North Polar region has 
been immensely augmented ; while Africa has been crossed and re-crossed ; 
while the telegraph line has been carried over the then unknown interior 
of Australia, absolutely nothing has been done towards clearing up the 
mystery which enshrouds the regions lying within the antarctic circle. It 
has been estimated that a portion of the globe, three times the area of 
Europe, here lies unexplored. The entrance to this field of enterprise, too, 
is within a few days' steam of Otago. 
It is of the highest geographieal importance to know whether an 
antarctic continent exists or not. Cook's researches in the latter part of 
the eighteenth century dispelled the old belief in a Terra Australis, but 
