DR. FARR'S OPINION

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 136, 5 December 1929, Page 9

DR. FARR'S OPINION

(By Telegraph.) (Special to "The Evening Post.")

CHRISTCHURCH, This Day.

Beyond stating that Major Gran had been in the Antarctic, and should knew what he was talking about, Dr. C. C. Farr, Professor of Physics at Canterbury College, who has had experience in subAntarctic exploration, had littlo to say about the question.

"Nevertheless, Byrd is a straightforward and honourable chap, and I do not like to see it even suggested that he has deliberately exaggerated hie experiences," ho said. Describing Major Gran's criticism of Commander Byrd's story as an unwarrantable and inexplicable attack upon tho American explorer, a keen student of South Polar exploration said that Byrd's descriptions of tho vast mountains he encountered tallied absolutely with what Amundsen saw and recorded in his writing. Amundsen passed with difficulty through a great and broken rang© containing peaks in some cases 15,000 feet high. Scott, who crossed the mountains at another point, did so by climbing the great Beardmore Glacier, which was twenty-five miles wide and one- hundred miles long. Gran's statement that Bryd's story of the mountains was a fancy was simply incorrect, and to say that the area traversed was all a huge plain which but for a few crevasses could be crossed on a motor-cycle, was stupidly ridiculous.