valuable to oceanographic sciences, and our examination of a part of the great restless sea of ice, which encircles the pole, will be the basis of all future work in this region. We shall emerge from an area of perennial winter, never before invaded by man, with the knowledge of having been the first of all human beings to pass through the south polar winter and its long night. We feel, one and all, that our mission has been accomplished, and we are waiting impatiently to be freed from this embrace of the frozen sea. January 9.--From the first to the ninth there was little of interest aside from the usual run of life. We took a few Ross seals (_Ommatophoca Rossi_), saw two new birds, but did not secure them, and were generally busy preparing the ship for the home voyage. We have had a continuous southerly wind, but its force was so light that we drifted little, though our sounding yesterday was 1490 m., which we take as an encouragement of a northerly movement off of the shallow sea over which we have floated so long. The bergs continue to change positions, but our pan, which is a little over two miles in diameter, is the same as it was two months ago, except that the snow has melted to an average thickness of about a half metre. Because our floe has not changed its form or shown any signs of disruption since November first, and also because we have had no ice-destroying tempest since that time, we have no good reason to suppose that we shall have a storm, or that our floe will fracture in a line to liberate us during the remaining two months of possible navigation. [Illustration: Star-Fish and Sea-Urchins from the Bottom of the Antarctic Sea.] [Illustration: A New Shrimp of the Genera of Euphausia, Discovered by Racovitza. It is the Staple Food of the Penguins and Seals.]