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descended to the moat, arriving in exactly the same manner, save that the skin vanished from the knuckles of my left hand this time! However, after tramping some distance north we found a place where the cornice had broken off, and here I was hauled up, my ice axe finding a tender spot in my leg as I reached 'glacier' firma.

Our rest was disturbed all night by a sound like continuous volley-firing. This was due to the cooling temperatures causing the glacier to contract and split.

In the forenoon Wright and P.O. Evans explored the ice falls and moraines near Solitary Rocks while Debenham and I walked towards Knob Head. The direction of the moraines revealed the interesting fact that all the ice from the Plateau was moving into Dry Valley and not into the Lower Ferrar as was previously supposed. The Ferrar and Taylor glaciers are 'apposed' glaciers linked like Siamese twins by the col at Knob Head. Originally they were quite distinct, and they will again be separated when the ice has dwindled a little farther.

That evening we discussed literature. P.O. Evans disliked Dickens and Kipling, whom Debenham and I enjoy thoroughly. He preferred a well-known foreign writer whose name he very sensibly pronounced Dum-ass. Our sledging library was quite extensive, for each of us had devoted a pound of our personal allowance to books. I will give the catalogue, if only as a caution to later explorers. Debenham took my Browning and the 'Autocrat'; Evans had a William le Queux and the Red Magazine; Wright had two mathematical books, both in German; I took Debenham's Tennyson and three small German