tirely unknown and uncharted except in
the Ross Sea area, while the fringes of the land are only discovered in
perhaps a dozen places on a circumference of about eleven thousand miles.

In his Life of Sir Joseph Hooker, Dr. Leonard Huxley has given us some
interesting sidelights on this expedition under Ross. Hooker was the
botanist of the expedition and assistant surgeon to the Erebus, being 22
years old when he left England in 1839. Natural history came off very
badly in the matter of equipment from the Government, who provided
twenty-five reams of paper, two botanizing vascula and two cases for
bringing home live plants: that was all, not an instrument, nor a book,
nor a bottle, and rum from the ship's stores was the only preservative.
And when they returned, the rich collections which they brought back were
never fully worked out. Ross's special branch of science was terrestrial
magnetism, but he was greatly interested in Natural History, and gave up
part of his cabin for Hooker to work in. "Almost every day I draw,
sometimes all day long and till two and three in the morning, the Captain
directing me; he sits on one side of the table, writing and figuring at
night, and I on the other, drawing. Every now and then he breaks off and
comes to my side, to see what I am after ..." and, "as you may suppose,
we have had one or two little tiffs, neither of us perhaps being helped
by the best of tempers; but nothing can exceed the liberality with which
he has thrown open his cabin to me and made it my workroom at no little
inconvenience to himself."

Another extract from Hooker's letters after the first voyage runs as
follows:

"The success of the Expedition in Geographical discovery is really
wonderful, and only shows what a little perseverance will do, for we have
been in no dangerous predicaments, and have suffered no hardships
whatever: there has been a sort of freemasonry among Polar voyagers to
keep up the credit they have acquired as having done wonders, and
accordingly, such of us as were new to the ice made up our minds for
frost-bites, and attached a most undue importance to the simple operation
of boring packs, etc., which have now vanished, though I am not going to
tell everybody so; I do not here refer to travellers, who do indeed
undergo unheard-of hardships, but to voyagers who have a snug ship, a
little knowledge of the Ice, and due caution is all that is required."

In the light of Scott's leading of the