TO PRACTICAL USE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 296, 14 December 1936, Page 12

TO PRACTICAL USE.

EXPLORER'S DATA. : - - ANTARCTIC POSSIBILITIES. Sooner or later practical use will be made of the (lata collected by explorers in the Antarctic, said Captain R. G. England to a "Star-Sun!' reporter. Captain England, who is making a short visit to Christ,church, was associated with two Antarctic exploration parties —Captain I?. F. Scott's and Sir Ernest Shackleton's. He was second in command, under Captain W. Colbcck, of the Morning, the relief ship of Scott's expedition, and later, in 1907, commanded the Ximrod and was second in command of the Shackleton expedition. "Xo. My days of exploration are definitely over," said Captain England. "I have spent the last thirty years exploring life from the commercial point of view."

His old associations were revived, however, lie said, by his membership of tlie Antarctic Club in London. The club kept in touch with all the expeditions and entertained foreign explorers who came to England.

It was his firm which largely provided facilities for the Everest expedition, under Mr. Hugh Kuttledge, said Captain England. It came under Captain England's personal supervision. Special care had to bo taken with the packing and storing of the goods for the reason that when the climbers reached a certain height their mental capacity was reduced to about 5 per cent of normal, so that a mistake in packing might pave the wa.y for a fatality. It was only the driving power of reaching their objective that kept them goin<x. "There must never be a mistake," Mr. Kuttledge told him.

As far as he knew, there was no movement afoot in England that was of particular interest to New Zealand.

Of the possibilities of the Antarctic, it could only be guesswork. They might lie in minerals or sealing. Traces of gold had been found by the Scott expedition, but in such small quantities that it would not be a payable proposition.

Exploration by air did not have the same attraction for hiiii. "Personally, I have never been up in an aeroplane and have no desire to go up," Captain England confessed. Wireless, too, had introduced an element which made conditions vastly different from what they were in the days of Scott and Sliackleton.

"However," he added, "there is still plenty of scope and plenty of romance and opportunity for individual effort. The danger is that educaton has reached such a highly-organised plane that we are in danger of turning out a type, trimming the boys to conform too much to a certain set of standards. It can't be helped. Anything else must be left to the individual."