“The probable place of infection was Vladivostok before the dogs were put on board ship and deported to New Zealand.  The only method of coping with the disease is prevention of infection in infected areas.  It is probable that the mosquitoes would not bite after the dog’s coat had been rubbed with paraffin:  or mosquito netting might be placed over the kennels, especially at night time.  The larval forms were found microscopically in the blood, and one mature form in the heart.”

We were too careful about killing animals.  I have explained how Campbell’s party was landed at Evans Coves.  Some of the party wanted to kill some seals on the off chance of the ship not turning up to relieve them.  This was before they were in any way alarmed.  But it was decided that life might be taken unnecessarily if they did this—­and that winter this party nearly died of starvation.  And yet this country has allowed penguins to be killed by the million every year for Commerce and a farthing’s worth of blubber.

We never killed unless it was necessary, and what we had to kill was used to the utmost both for food and for the scientific work in hand.  The first Emperor penguin we ever saw at Cape Evans was captured after an exciting chase outside the hut in the middle of a blizzard.  He kept us busy for days:  the zoologist got a museum skin, showing some variation from the usual coloration, a skeleton, and some useful observation on the digestive glands:  the parasitologist got a new tape-worm:  we all had a change of diet.  Many a pheasant has died for less.

There were plenty of Weddell seal round us this winter, but they kept out of the wind and in the water for the most part.  The sea is the warm place of the Antarctic, for the temperature never falls below about 29 deg.  Fahr., and a seal which has been lying out on the ice in a minus thirty temperature, and perhaps some wind, must feel, as he slips into the sea, much the same sensations as occur to us when we walk out of a cold English winter day into a heated conservatory.  On the other hand, a seaman went out into North Bay to bathe from a boat, in the full sun of a mid-summer day, and he was out almost as soon as he was in.  One of the most beautiful sights of this winter was to see the seals, outlined in phosphorescent light, swimming and hunting in the dark water.

We had lectures, but not as many as during the previous winter when they became rather excessive:  and we included outside subjects.  We read in many a polar book of the depressions and trials of the long polar night; but thanks to gramophones, pianolas, variety of food, and some study of the needs both of mind and body, we suffered very little from the first year’s months of darkness.  There is quite a store of novelty in living in the dark:  most of us I think thoroughly enjoyed it.  But a second winter, with some of your best friends dead, and others in great difficulties, perhaps dying, when