THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 407 
other learned societies, to induce the British Government 
to send out a naval expedition, but this was unsuccess- 
ful. Sir Clements Markham, as president of the Royal 
Geographical Society, thereupon reiterated his declaration 
of two years before that he would never swerve from the 
task until it was completed. From that time the whole 
strength of his vehement personality was thrown into the 
work of promoting an expedition and he triumphed over 
every obstacle. In face of his enthusiasm others who 
took a different view as to organisation, or were less hope- 
ful of the practicability of building a ship or dispatching 
an expedition until all the funds necessary for its com- 
pletion and return were secured, gradually offered less 
and less opposition, and finally ceased to urge the views 
they continued to hold. A remarkable meeting took 
place in the rooms of the Royal Society on February 26th, 
1898, when all the leaders in the movement for polar dis- 
covery were present and spoke with a unanimity of pur- 
pose which no one who heard them can soon forget. Sir 
John Murray commenced by summarising the scientific 
conditions which required investigation, and reiterated 
his opinion that only a naval expedition with a credit of 
£150,000 should be looked upon as sufficient for the task 
of exploration. Sir Joseph Hooker, Dr. Fridtjof Nansen, 
Dr. von Neumayer, Sir Clements Markham and many 
others took part in the discussion, which was prolonged 
to an hour unprecedented in the 250 years’ annals of the 
Royal Society. 
At the same time there was a fresh movement in Ger- 
many, where an influential Committee presided over by 
Dr. von Neumayer selected as the leader of a German Ant- 
arctic expedition Dr. Erich von Drygalski, one of the 
Professors of Geography in the University of Berlin, and 
