In contrast with sea-ice, the ice of a glacier is a marvel of prismatic colour and glassy brilliance. This is more noticeable near the surface when the sun is shining. Deep down in a shaft, or in an ice-cavern, the sapphire reflection gives to the human face quite a ghastly pallor. During the high winds it was always easy to dispose of the fragments of ice in the earlier stages of sinking a shaft. To be rid of them, all that was necessary was to throw a shovelful vertically upwards towards the lee-side of the hole, the wind then did the rest. Away the chips would scatter, tinkling over the surface of the glacier. Of course, when two men were at work, each took it in turns to go below, and the one above, to keep warm, would impatiently pace up and down. Nevertheless, so cold would he become at times that a heated colloquy would arise between them on the subject of working overtime. When the shaft had attained depth, both were kept busy. The man at the pit's mouth lowered a bucket on a rope to receive the ice and, in hauling it up, handicapped with clumsy mitts, he had to be careful not to drop it on his companion's head. The structural composition of ice is a study in itself. To the cursory glance a piece of glacier-ice appears homogeneous, but when dissected in detail it is found to be formed of many crystalline, interlocking grains, ranging in size from a fraction of an inch to several inches in diameter. A grain-size of a half to one inch is perhaps commonest in Antarctic glacier-ice. The history of Antarctic glacier-ice commences with the showers of snow that fall upon the plateau. The snow particles may be blown for hundreds of miles before they finally come to rest and consolidate. The consolidated snow is called neve, the grains of which are one-twenty-fifth to one hundredth of an inch in diameter, and, en masse, present a dazzling white appearance on account of the air spaces which occupy one-third to one-half of the whole. In time, under the influence of a heavy load of accumulated layers of neve, the grains run together and the air spaces are eliminated. The final result is clear, transparent ice, of a more or less sapphire-blue colour when seen in large blocks. It contains only occasional air-bubbles, and the size of the grains is much increased. Lake-ice, freezing from the surface downwards, is built up of long parallel prisms, like the cells of a honey-comb on a large scale. In a lakelet near the Hut this was beautifully demonstrated. In some places cracks and fissures filled with snow-dust traversed the body of the ice, and in other places long strings of beaded air-bubbles had become entangled in the process of freezing. To lie down on the clear surface and gaze "through the looking-glass" to the rocky bottom, twenty feet below, was a glimpse into "Wonderland."