Yesterday we had a really successful balloon ascent:  the balloon ran out four miles of thread before it was released, and the instrument fell without a parachute.  The searchers followed the clue about 2 1/2 miles to the north, when it turned and came back parallel to itself, and only about 30 yards distant from it.  The instrument was found undamaged and with the record properly scratched.

Nelson has been out a good deal more of late.  He has got a good little run of serial temperatures with water samples, and however meagre his results, they may be counted as exceedingly accurate; his methods include the great scientific care which is now considered necessary for this work, and one realises that he is one of the few people who have been trained in it.  Yesterday he got his first net haul from the bottom, with the assistance of Atkinson and Cherry-Garrard.

Atkinson has some personal interest in the work.  He has been getting remarkable results himself and has discovered a host of new parasites in the seals; he has been trying to correlate these with like discoveries in the fishes, in hope of working out complete life histories in both primary and secondary hosts.

But the joint hosts of the fishes may be the mollusca or other creatures on which they feed, and hence the new fields for Atkinson in Nelson’s catches.  There is a relative simplicity in the round of life in its higher forms in these regions that would seem especially hopeful for the parasitologist.

My afternoon walk has become a pleasure; everything is beautiful in this half light and the northern sky grows redder as the light wanes.

Tuesday, August 15.—­The instrument recovered from the balloon shows an ascent of 2 1/2 miles, and the temperature at that height only 5 deg. or 6 deg.  C. below that at the surface.  If, as one must suppose, this layer extends over the Barrier, it would there be at a considerably higher temperature than the surface Simpson has imagined a very cold surface layer on the Barrier.

The acetylene has suddenly failed, and I find myself at this moment writing by daylight for the first time.

The first addition to our colony came last night, when ‘Lassie’ produced six or seven puppies—­we are keeping the family very quiet and as warm as possible in the stable.

It is very pleasant to note the excellent relations which our young Russians have established with other folk; they both work very hard, Anton having most to do.  Demetri is the more intelligent and begins to talk English fairly well.  Both are on the best terms with their mess-mates, and it was amusing last night to see little Anton jamming a felt hat over P.O.  Evans’ head in high good humour.

Wright lectured on radium last night.

The transformation of the radio-active elements suggestive of the transmutation of metals was perhaps the most interesting idea suggested, but the discussion ranged mainly round the effect which the discovery of radio-activity has had on physics and chemistry in its bearing on the origin of matter, on geology as bearing on the internal heat of the earth, and on medicine in its curative powers.  The geologists and doctors admitted little virtue to it, but of course the physicists boomed their own wares, which enlivened the debate.