a mixture of all three. So, in concentrating foods for
sledging, the largest possible proportion of fat, compatible with other
considerations, is included.

Ordinarily, a normal man consumes some four or five pounds weight of
solid food per diem, of which 50 per cent., it is rather surprising to
learn, is water. When sledging, one has the satisfaction of knowing that
all but the smallest quantity of the food dragged is solid nutriment.
The water is added when the meals are cooked. It is just in this
artificial addition that the sledging ration is not perfect, though as a
synthesis it satisfies the demands of dietetics. Food containing water,
as cooked meat oozing with its own gravy is a more palatable thing than
dried meat-powder to which boiling water has been added. In the same
way, a dry, hard biscuit plus liquid is a different thing from a spongy
loaf of yeast bread with its high percentage of water. One must reckon
with the psychic factor in eating. When sledging, one does not look for
food well served as long as the food is hot, nourishing and filling. So
the usage of weeks and a wolfish appetite make hoosh a most delicious
preparation; but when the days of an enforced ration are over, the
desire for appetizing well-served food reasserts itself. The body
refuses to be treated merely as an engine.

The daily polar sledging ration for one man has been concentrated to
a figure just above two pounds in weight, For instance, in recent
Antarctic expeditions, Scott, in 1903, used 34.7 ozs., Shackleton in
1908 used 34.82 ozs. and our own amounted to 34.25 ozs. Exclusive of
tea, pepper and salt, Shackleton's ration and that adopted by Wild at
the Western Base and ourselves in Adelie Land were identical--34 ozs.
Reverting to earlier explorers, for the sake of comparisons, McClintock
in 1850 brought his minimum down to 42 ozs., Nares in 1875 to 40 ozs.,
Greely in 1882 to 41.75 ozs., and Abruzzi in 1900 to 43.5 ozs.

Our allowance was made up as follows, the relative amounts in the daily
sledging ration for one man being stated: plasmon biscuit, 12 ozs.;
pemmican, 8 ozs.; butter, 2 ozs.; plasmon chocolate, 2 ozs.; glaxo
(dried milk), 5 ozs.; sugar, 4 ozs.; cocoa, 1 oz.; tea,.25 oz. It will
be instructive to make a short note on each item.

Plasmon biscuit was made of the best flour mixed with 30 per cent. of
plasmon powder. Each biscuit weighed 2.25 ozs., and was made specially
thick and hard to resist shaking and bumping