y steam the cyclone would have caught us up,
and we should have been travelling with it, and consequently in continual
bad weather. On the other hand, a steamer pure and simple would have
steamed through good and bad alike. But we, with our auxiliary steam,
only made much the same headway as the disturbance travelling in our
wake, and so remained in the anticyclone.

Physical observations were made on the outward voyage by Simpson and
Wright[36] into the atmospheric electricity over the ocean, one set of
which consisted of an inquiry into the potential gradient, and
observations were undertaken at Melbourne for the determination of the
absolute value of the potential gradient over the sea.[37] Numerous
observations were also made on the radium content of the atmosphere over
the ocean, to be compared afterwards with observations in the Antarctic
air. The variations in radium content were not large. Results were also
obtained on the voyage of the Terra Nova to New Zealand upon the subject
of natural ionization in closed vessels.

In addition to the work of the ship and the physical work above
mentioned, work in vertebrate zoology, marine biology and magnetism,
together with four-hourly observations of the salinity and temperature of
the sea, was carried out during the whole voyage.

In vertebrate zoology Wilson kept an accurate record of birds, and he and
Lillie another record of whales and dolphins. All the birds which could
be caught, both at sea and on South Trinidad Island, were skinned and
made up into museum specimens. They were also examined for external and
internal parasites by Wilson, Atkinson and myself, as were also such fish
and other animals as could be caught, including flying fish, a shark, and
last but not least, whales in New Zealand.

The method of catching these birds may be worth describing. A bent nail
was tied to a line, the other end of which was made fast to the halyards
over the stern. Sufficient length of line was allowed either to cause the
nail to just trail in the sea in the wake of the ship or for the line to
just clear the sea. Thus when the halyard was hoisted to some thirty or
forty feet above the deck, the line would be covering a considerable
distance of sea.

The birds flying round the ship congregate for the main part in the wake,
for here they find the scraps thrown overboard on which they feed. I have
seen six albatross all together trying to eat up an empty treacle tin.

As t