158 
president's address. 
party of about ten men should be landed somewhere to the South 
of Cape Horn, probably about Bismarck Strait at Graham's Land. 
The expedition should then proceed to Victoria Land, where a 
second similar party should winter, probably in Macmurdo Bay, 
near Mount Erebus. The ships should not become frozen in, nor 
attempt to winter in the far south, but should return towards the 
north, conducting observations of various kinds along the outer 
margins of the ice. After the needful rest and outfit at the 
Falk lands or Australia, the position of the ice and the temperature 
of the ocean should be observed in the early spring, and later the 
wintering parties should be communicated with, and, if necessar} T , 
reinforced with men and supplies for another winter. During the 
second winter the deep-sea observations should be continued 
northwards, and in the third season the wintering parties should 
be picked up and the expedition return to England. The winter- 
ing parties might largely be composed of civilians, and one or two 
civilians might be attached to each ship ; this plan worked 
admirably during the Challenger expedition." 
" What, it may be asked, would be the advantages*to trade and 
commerce of such an expedition % It must be confessed that no 
definite or very encouraging answer can be given. We know of 
no extensive fisheries in these regions. For a long time seal and 
sea-elephant fisheries have been carried on about the islands of 
the Southern Ocean, but we have no indication of large herds or 
rookeries within the Antarctic Circle. A whale fishery was at one 
time carried on in the neighbourhood of Kerguelen, but this 
right whale, if distinct from or identical with Balcena aus trails, 
appears to have become nearly, if not quite, extinct. Some 
expressions of Ross would lead one to suppose that a whale cor- 
responding to the Greenland right whale inhabits the seas within 
the Antarctic ice, but we have no definite knowledge of the exis- 
tence of such a species. Although " sulphur-bottoms" (Balw- 
noptera musculus), " finbacks" (Balcerwptera Sibbaldii), and 
" humpbacks" {Mega.ptera boops) are undoubtedly abundant, they 
do not repay capture. Ross and McCormick report the sperm 
whale within the Antarctic ice, but there is still some doubt on 
