ANTARCTICA

QUEST. OF SCIENCE

NEW WHALING INDUSTRY?

The persistent curiosity of science for the unattained —but not unattainable—secrets held by the wastes of Antarctica was explained in a measure by Sir Douglas Mawson last evening to the Wellington branch of the EngjishSpeaking Union and the New Zealand Antarctic Society, which entertained Sir Douglas and his daughter. Miss Patricia Mawson. The data brought back from the South, he said, was extremely~valuable, but scientists were handicapped by lack of transport. If only minerals could be discovered or fishing exploited men could go down there regularly instead of only once or twice in a lifetime. In Australia he had been preaching taking up whaling in Antarctica, but.no one had done so yet. If there were 20,000-ton whaling ships going down aeroplanes could be carried and many gaps in the Antarctic coast filled, up. He did not expect to find a bonanza, said Sir Douglas, but there were possibilities of mineral wealth being discovered; if it could be found—although expeditions did not spend any time looking for it—it would solve the difficulty of financing exploration parties. Describing what he called the quest of the Antarctic, Sir Douglas said perhaps it was not realised that in the not long geological past there was a great continent to the south of New Zealand with no ice on it at all. Then there came the Ice Age, which had all taken place in the last million years. ICE RECEDING. It was known that the ice was melting back year by year, and evidence showed that it was receding rapidly. Perhaps in 2500 years, which was one critical period in the future, there would be very little ice, probably none, in New Zealand, and in Antarctica a great deal of land would be exposed, and as time went on it would be a continent1 without ice. The story that was bound up in Antarctica was needed in order to complete the knowledge of things, as far as was humanly possible, in relation to life in other lands. The meteorological interest was also great The struggle between the heat of the equatorial areas and the refrigeration from the Poles kept up the circulation of the engine of the earth. When that ice disappeared one day there would be a great change in the atmospheric circulation, and conditions would be so different that it was hard to predict what they would be like. A greater knowledge of the Polar forces would be of great importance in the forecasting of weather.