expedition of which I am about to
tell, and the extraordinary scientific activity of Pennell in command of
the Terra Nova after Scott was landed, Hooker would have to qualify a
later extract, "nor is it probable that any future collector will have a
Captain so devoted to the cause of Marine Zoology, and so constantly on
the alert to snatch the most trifling opportunities of adding to the
collection...."

Finally, we have a picture of the secrecy which was imposed upon all with
regard to the news they should write home and the precautions against any
leakage of scientific results. And we see Hooker jumping down the main
hatch with a penguin skin in his hand which he was preparing for himself,
when Ross came up the after hatch unexpectedly. That _has_ happened on
the Terra Nova!

Ross had a cold reception on his return, and Scott wrote to Hooker in
1905:

"At first it seems inexplicable when one considers how highly his work is
now appreciated. From the point of view of the general public, however, I
have always thought that Ross was neglected, and as you once said he is
very far from doing himself justice in his book. I did not know that
Barrow was the bete noire who did so much to discount Ross's results. It
is an interesting sidelight on such a venture."[11]

In discussing and urging the importance of the Antarctic Expedition which
was finally sent under Scott in the Discovery, Hooker urged the
importance of work in the South Polar Ocean, which swarms with animal and
vegetable life. Commenting upon the fact that the large collections made
chiefly by himself had never been worked out, except the diatoms, he
writes:

"A better fate, I trust, awaits the treasures that the hoped-for
Expedition will bring back, for so prolific is the ocean that the
naturalist need never be idle, no, not even for one of the twenty-four
hours of daylight during a whole Antarctic summer, and I look to the
results of a comparison of the oceanic life of the Arctic and Antarctic
regions as the heralding of an epoch in the history of biology."[12]

When Ross went to the Antarctic it was generally thought that there was
neither food nor oxygen nor light in the depths of the ocean, and that
therefore there was no life. Among other things the investigations of
Ross gave ground for thinking this was not the case. Later still, in
1873, the possibility of laying submarine cables made it necessary to
investigate the nature of the abyssal depths, a