406 
SCOTT'S LAST EXPEDITION 
[September 
illustrating them with lantern slides made from our own 
photographs, from books, or from drawings of the lecturer. 
The custom adds to the interest of the subject, but robs 
the reporter of notes. The second weekly lecture was 
given by Ponting. His store of pictures seems unending 
and has been an immense source of entertainment to us 
during the winter. His lectures appeal to all and are 
fully attended. This time wc had pictures of the Great 
Wall and other stupendous monuments of North China. 
Ponting always manages to work in detail concerning the 
manners and customs of the peoples in the countries of 
his travels ; on Friday he told us of Chinese farms and 
industries, of hawking and other sports, most curious of 
all, of the pretty amusement of flying pigeons with a?olian 
whistling pipes attached to their tail feathers. 
Ponting would have been a great asset to our party 
if only on account of his lectures, but his value as pictorial 
recorder of events becomes daily more apparent. No 
expedition has ever been illustrated so extensively, and 
the only difficulty will be to select from the countless 
subjects that have been recorded by his camera — and yet 
not a single subject is treated with haste ; the first picture 
is rarely counted good enough, and in some cases five or 
six plates are exposed before our very critical artist is 
satisfied. 
This way of going to work would perhaps be more 
striking if it were not common to all our workers here ; 
a very demon of unrest seems to stir them to effort, and 
there is now not a single man who is not striving his utmost 
to get good results in his own particular department. 
