The laboratory is in a small, specially constructed deckhouse behind the foremast. Its dimensions are small, perhaps fifteen feet long and twelve feet wide, but its capacity for storing instruments, and its convenience for work is phenomenal. It is intended as the centre for all scientific work, a sort of “union den” for the working staff, as the motto painted in large letters over the window “_L’Union Fait L’Force_,” indicates. It will, however, be principally used for meteorologic, oceanographic, and zoölogical investigations. When one first steps into the laboratory, there creeps over one a fear to move, for everything seems a frail meshwork of glass; straight and spiral tubes, glass cylinders, thermometers, barometers, test tubes, bottles, and glass articles, too numerous to mention, are attached to all the available surface on the walls, the shelves and even the ceiling. At first appearance one would pronounce the frail fixtures short-lived, and it certainly seems as if a single sharp toss or sudden pitch of the ship would send the whole glassy splendour in fragments to the floor. The vessel, however, has rolled for three months on the destructive swell of the Atlantic, and, thanks to the carefully planned attachments, very few instruments have been broken; so we have reason to hope from this experience that the ice will not be more injurious. A very complete library is on board. It is a library, like the men, of various tongues, and descriptive of a great variety of subjects. Each department has its technical bibliography. The Commandant and the writer have a general collection of all the antarctic narratives in all tongues. The Captain has a heap of charts and books on navigation; Lieutenant Danco has everything pertaining to terrestrial magnetism. The general scientific library is indeed a cosmopolitan collection. It contains books in French, English, German, Polish, Norwegian, and Rumanian print. In addition to serious literature, we have other books and magazines of lighter character. But these float about, from the laboratory to the cabin, and then to the forecastle, always in the hands of those whose spirits need elevating. Weeklies with unusually good pictures, such as half tones of beautiful women, theatric or opera scenes are reserved and served after dinner as a kind of entertainment.