Although we do not expect to hunt seals or whales or anything else for commercial purposes, the expedition is well prepared to take all kinds of life for scientific study. We have boom and harpoon guns to capture whales and sea-elephants. We have rifles, shotguns, pistols, knives, and ammunition to do justice to a pirate ship. Several thousand pounds of alcohol, and a large quantity of chemicals are on hand to preserve animal specimens, and also cotton for stuffing birds, as well as an apparatus for blowing eggs. Our cameras are of all varieties, and with these we expect to photograph the strange antarctic life with its immediate surroundings. The devices for scientific fishing are as complete as the limited finances would permit. We shall be able to fish on the surface in the middle stratas, and on the bottom of the deep sea. We can even scrape the bed of the ocean with huge dredges for low forms of life, and can drop the thermometer down to register the degrees of heat of the invisible homes of these strange creatures. The trawls and dredges are made after the last American Sigsbee system as improved by Professor Agassiz. There are four large frames, fifteen nets, and three thousand fathoms of galvanised steel rope with a tensile strength of five tons to haul the catch by steam. And then there is the tangle-bar, and much other fishing apparatus, all of which would make an old-time fisherman stare with envy. In short, the equipment is such that not only the life of the air and land will be accessible, but also a systematic study of the marine life inhabiting the unmeasured depths of the southern ocean will be for the first time possible. The new science of oceanography, or as Lieutenant Maury, its father, called it, “the geography of the sea,” has been constantly in mind in the organisation and equipment of the _Belgica_. The outfit for fishing partly belongs to this department; unique devices for sounding the ocean in all depths by the Monacho machine (with pianoforte wire and steel rope as a line, sinkers which detach automatically, and a complicated system of special steam machinery) is now adjusted, ready for use. We expect to study the submarine currents, temperature, and the composition of the water. For all of this, we have special apparatus, perhaps not interesting to the average reader in a description, but the results are sure to add a new and startling chapter to the growing annals of ocean science.