ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 174, 23 July 1907, Page 3

ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION.

The botany, zoology, ane geology of the sub-Antarctic region are attracting much attention ..in the scientific world. The New Zealand-Government, on < the initiative of the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury, will send a well-equip-ped party of scientists to the New Zealand sukAntarctic islands in November, and : a still more important expedition is now being organised in Sweden. Dr. Cockayne has received a letter from the leader of this expedition, Dr. C. Skottsberg, who is well known as the intrepid botanist of the famous Swedish Antarctic expei&tion, giving full details of the proposed work. The expedition will leave Sweden in September, and will spend the summer in the Falkland examining the peat-bogs for evidence as to the Origin of- the sub-Antarctic flora, the Swedish scientists being facile princeps in the examination of v peat-bogs, a new branch of palaeo botany. Winter will be spent cruising and investigating on land the Western Fuegian Channels, and the summer of 19OS-1909 will be devoted to" the investigation of the mainland of Tierra del Fuego, especially the mountains, and a critical comparison of species with those of New Zealand, so as to see if these are. really identical or if any differences exist. To aid this work Dr. Cockayne proposes to send to Dr. Skottsberg a full collection of such New Zealand plants as are Tβquired for this important work. After returning to Sweden, Dr. Skottsberg intends, in order to better understand the sub-Antarctic region, to pay a long, visit to New Zealand, "not," he writes, "that science requires foreign iotanists to carry on any important work there, but rather to learn from those botanists which New Zealand itself nurses." ■'*•"