Three lectures a week were too many in the opinion of the majority.  The second winter with our very reduced company we had two a week, and I feel sure that this was an improvement.  No officer nor seaman, however, could have had too many of Ponting’s lectures, which gave us glimpses into many lands illustrated by his own inimitable slides.  Thus we lived every now and then for a short hour in Burmah, India or Japan, in scenes of trees and flowers and feminine charm which were the very antithesis of our present situation, and we were all the better for it.  Ponting also illustrated the subjects of other lectures with home-made slides of photographs taken during the autumn or from printed books.  But for the most part the lecturers were perforce content with designs and plans, drawn on paper and pinned one on the top of the other upon a large drawing-board propped up on the table and torn off sheet by sheet.

From the practical point of view the most interesting evening to us was that on which Scott produced the Plan of the Southern Journey.  The reader may ask why this was not really prepared until the winter previous to the journey itself, and the answer clearly is that it was impossible to arrange more than a rough idea until the autumn sledging had taught its lesson in food, equipment, relative reliability of dogs, ponies and men, and until the changes and chances of our life showed exactly what transport would be available for the following sledging season.  Thus it was with lively anticipation that we sat down on May 8, an advisory committee as it were, to hear and give our suggestions on the scheme which Scott had evolved in the early weeks of the winter after the adventures of the Depot Journey and the loss of six ponies.

It was on just such a winter night, too, that Scott read his interesting paper on the Ice Barrier and Inland Ice which will probably form the basis for all future work on these subjects.  The Barrier, he maintained, is probably afloat, and covers at least five times the extent of the North Sea with an average thickness of some 400 feet, though it has only been possible to get the very roughest of levels.  According to the movement of a depot laid in the Discovery days the Barrier moved 608 yards towards the open Ross Sea in 131/2 months.  It must be admitted that the inclination of the ice-sheet is not sufficient to cause this, and the old idea that the glacier streams flowing down from Inland Plateau provide the necessary impetus is imperfect.  It was Simpson’s suggestion that “the deposition of snow on the Barrier leads to an expansion due to the increase of weight.”  Some admittedly vague ideas as to the extent and character of the inland ice-sheet ended a clever and convincing paper which contained a lot of good reasoning.