British Antarctic Expedition, 1907–1909 Reports on the Scientific Investigations. Meteorology

Abstract

THE Australian Department of Scientific and Industrial Research has earned the thanks of the scientific world for its action in rescuing, discussing, and publishing the meteorological results of Sir Ernest Shackleton's Antarctic Expedition of 1907–9. The Department was led to this good deed by the report of a committee in 1927 to the effect that “first-class scientific work by Australian investigators was sometimes in danger of being lost to subsequent workers owing to the impossibility of securing its publication”. Why the records kept so conscientiously and so laboriously on the Nimrod, at Cape Royds, and on the magnetic pole and south pole journeys, have hitherto remained undivulged (save for brief summaries in “The Heart of the Antarctic”), is not clearly explained. They appear to have been left in Australia or New Zealand on the return of the expedition, and we are glad that the participation as observers of Shackleton's Australian associates has made it possible for their government at last to publish the results. We are grateful to Sir Edgeworth David, of Sydney, and to Sir Joseph Kinsey, of Christchurch, N.Z., for their acknowledged share in enabling Dr. Kitson to prepare the observations for publication and to show the bearing of the expedition's results on the meteorology of the Antarctic region and of the southern hemisphere.

British Antarctic Expedition, 1907–1909. Reports on the Scientific Investigations. Meteorology.

Dr. Edward Kitson. Pp. 188. (Melbourne: Council for Scientific and Industrial Research; London: Official Secretary, Australia House, n.d.) 8s.