BIOLOGY 



eastward in the snow-field stretching up to the rocky 

 crags of the cone of Mount Erebus. 



On the very edge of the sea, the httle colony of Adelie 

 penguins and the scattered skua gulls relieved the 

 monotony. Beyond was no Hving creature, no blade of 

 grass, or tiniest patch of welcome green. 



Bleak and bare though it was, this stretch of two or 

 three miles of broken country, where rocky peaks and 

 ridges, moraines and snow drifts, diversified the surface, 

 was the field of operations for the biologist. The white 

 waste of glacier and snow-field was hopeless, the nearer 

 country seemed little more promising. 



The sea was there, known to be teeming with varied 

 life, but it was inaccessible till the ice should bridge it 

 over. 



In the immediate vicinity of the camp were many little 

 sharp peaks of kenyte, and short valleys filled with a 

 cindery gravel derived from the decomposition of the 

 same rock. Moraines covered the rock in places, and many 

 of the valleys contained frozen ponds or lakes of various 

 sizes up to half a mile in length. 



The first walks over the hills did little to encourage 

 the biologist. The rugged kenyte, with its hard pro- 

 jecting felspar crystals tearing the boots, supported no 

 living thing. Little could we suspect that far beneath the 

 thick ice of the lakes was plentiful life, dormant, it is 

 true, but only waiting to be thawed out to spring into 

 activity. 



Gradually, as we came to know it, it began to appear 

 that the barrenness was not so absolute as we at first 

 supposed. On an early walk, Mr. Shackleton brought 

 home a scrap of moss and lichen, but it was long after- 

 wards that the melting of the snow in the next summer 

 revealed that fact that on some of the moraines the 



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