FAR SOUTH.

Thames Star, Volume LVII, Issue 15160, 22 February 1922, Page 2

FAR SOUTH.

SCOTT’S EXPEDITION. NEW THEORY OF DISASTER. Was the ill-fated end of Scott’s Antarctic Expedition due to a “disease” of metals known as “tin plague” 1 ? Mr. A. W. C. Menzies, of Princeton University, New puts forward a theory in “Nature” that this was likely to have been one of the contributory causes. “Tin plague” is a modification in tin which sets up in very cold temperatures. According to the investigations of Professor Ernst Cohen, the Dutch chemist, this change spreads fastest at about minus 50 degrees centigrade. Scbtt in his last message referred to the shortage of fuel in the depots, for which he could not account. There was a “leakage” of the fuel oil that was stored in the cans at the depots along the line of the return march from the Pole. Oil cans were found intact and without holes of any kind, and it was therefore thought by some that the oil had evaporated through the stoppers. So far the mystery has never been cleared up, but Mr. Menzies learns fron\ Professor Cohen, in regard to this peculiarity of tin, that the professor “had experience of precisely the same phenomenon in the case of canned, foods stored at rather low temperatures.” He therefore suggests that “the paraffin cans contracted tin disease, thus exposing the underlying iron, in spots at least, tp the danger of cheinical action, and so becoming ‘pin-holed,’ with the possible aid of electrolytes present in traces from the process of refining the oil.” Professor Cohen, who has been continuing his investigations on tin, finds that below 18 degrees centigrade, ordinary white tin is no longer stable.