THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC 



through it with any violence, neither could the sun 

 throw its direct beams on the sensitive thermometers 

 inside. On the flat top of the screen were nailed two 

 pices of wood in the form of a cross, the long axis of 

 which lay in the true meridian, that is, one end pointing 

 due south, the other end due north. On a small rod 

 attached to the fore end of the screen was a vane that 

 floated out in the opposite direction to that from which 

 the wind was blowing, and by reference to the vane and 

 the cross the direction of the wind was ascertained 

 and noted when the other observations were taken. 

 To record the force of the wind and the number of 

 miles it travelled between each observation, there 

 was an instrument called an anemometer, which rested 

 on one of the uprights supporting the meteorological 

 screen; the type of anemometer used by the expedition 

 is known as the " Robinson." It consists of four cups 

 or hemispheres revolving on a pivot which communicates 

 by a series of cogs with a dial having two hands like the 

 hands of a watch. The long hand makes one revolu- 

 tion and records five miles, and the smaller hand records 

 up to five hundred miles. At a glance we could thus 

 tell the number of miles the wind had blown during 

 the time elapsing between successive observations. 

 In ordinary climates the work of reading these instru- 

 ments was a matter of little difficulty and only took a 

 few minutes, but in the Antarctic, especially when a 

 blizzard was blowing, the difficulty was much increased 

 and the strong wind often blew out the hurricane 

 lamp which was used to read the instruments in the 

 darkness. On these occasions the unfortunate ob- 

 server had to return to the hut, relight the lamp and 

 again struggle up the windy ridge to the screen. In 

 order to try and facilitate the reading of the various 

 instruments during the long polar night the dry cells 



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