Thursday, August 17.—­The weather has been extremely kind to us of late; we haven’t a single grumble against it.  The temperature hovers pretty constantly at about -35 deg., there is very little wind and the sky is clear and bright.  In such weather one sees well for more than three hours before and after noon, the landscape unfolds itself, and the sky colours are always delicate and beautiful.  At noon to-day there was bright sunlight on the tops of the Western Peaks and on the summit and steam of Erebus—­of late the vapour cloud of Erebus has been exceptionally heavy and fantastic in form.

The balloon has become a daily institution.  Yesterday the instrument was recovered in triumph, but to-day the threads carried the searchers in amongst the icebergs and soared aloft over their crests—­anon the clue was recovered beyond, and led towards Tent Island, then towards Inaccessible, then back to the bergs.  Never was such an elusive thread.  Darkness descended with the searchers on a strong scent for the Razor Backs:  Bowers returned full of hope.

The wretched Lassie has killed every one of her litter.  She is mother for the first time, and possibly that accounts for it.  When the poor little mites were alive she constantly left them, and when taken back she either trod on them or lay on them, till not one was left alive.  It is extremely annoying.

As the daylight comes, people are busier than ever.  It does one good to see so much work going on.

Friday, August 18.—­Atkinson lectured on ‘Scurvy’ last night.  He spoke clearly and slowly, but the disease is anything but precise.  He gave a little summary of its history afloat and the remedies long in use in the Navy.

He described the symptoms with some detail.  Mental depression, debility, syncope, petechiae, livid patches, spongy gums, lesions, swellings, and so on to things that are worse.  He passed to some of the theories held and remedies tried in accordance with them.  Ralph came nearest the truth in discovering decrease of chlorine and alkalinity of urine.  Sir Almroth Wright has hit the truth, he thinks, in finding increased acidity of blood—­acid intoxication—­by methods only possible in recent years.

This acid condition is due to two salts, sodium hydrogen carbonate and sodium hydrogen phosphate; these cause the symptoms observed and infiltration of fat in organs, leading to feebleness of heart action.  The method of securing and testing serum of patient was described (titration, a colorimetric method of measuring the percentage of substances in solution), and the test by litmus paper of normal or super-normal solution.  In this test the ordinary healthy man shows normal 30 to 50:  the scurvy patient normal 90.

Lactate of sodium increases alkalinity of blood, but only within narrow limits, and is the only chemical remedy suggested.

So far for diagnosis, but it does not bring us much closer to the cause, preventives, or remedies.  Practically we are much as we were before, but the lecturer proceeded to deal with the practical side.