BOSS AS DISCOVEEEE 55 
volcano, and a hundred problems of great interest to the 
geographer ; in this unique region he carried out scientific 
research in every possible department, and by unremitted 
labour succeeded in collecting material which until quite 
lately has constituted almost the exclusive source of our 
knowledge of magnetic conditions in the higher southern 
latitudes. It might be said that it was James Cook who 
defined the Antarctic Eegion, and James Eoss who dis- 
covered it. 
For over half a century the expedition held the record for 
* furthest South ' — and it was from the land Eoss discovered 
that Scott, Shackleton, Amundsen, and again Scott set forth 
on their great Southern journeys. The regions beyond the 
Antarctic Circle jaelded next to nothing to the botanist : 
they were barren far beyond the barrenness of the Arctic Zone. 
A seaweed was only once found floating within the Antarctic 
Circle. At Cockburn Island one sole hchen was found, painting 
the exposed rocks with red and orange — a lichen, strangely 
enough, abundant in the Arctic, and next seen by Hooker on 
desolate summits of the Upper Himalayas, over against the 
Tibetan Plateau. 
The sea, however, had other harvests, and as elsewhere 
Hooker, unable to botanise, or not wholly engrossed in working 
at his collections, studied the floating creatures brought in by 
the tow-net or dredge, estabhshing for the first time the occur- 
rence of highly developed animal life at a depth of 400 fathoms, 
so here he determined the presence of abundant infusoria in 
the icy waters, which provided the ultimate means of sub- 
sistence for higher forms. Multitudes of small shrimps fed 
upon them, and supported abundance of whales : they were, 
moreover, eaten by the fish ; while birds and seals hved upon 
both and were themselves the prey of the killer-whales. 
This zoological interest appears from the very outset of 
the voyage and continues to the end, though of the third trip 
to the South he is compelled to write : ' Amongst the animals 
very httle or nothing has been done. I lost all my gauze in 
the pack from the water being so full of httle pieces of ice, and in 
the clear water it has always been blowing with heavy seas on.' 
