The death of Lady Kennet, on 25 July 1947, has removed one of the earliest and firmest supporters of the Scott Polar Research Institute.

A woman of rare gifts and wide interests, she was at ease in many circles, including those of art and of politics. In the naval and exploration circle, which she entered when she married Captain Scott, she was equally at home and welcomed. The wedding took place when Scott's last expedition, of 1910–13, was being planned, and she at once threw herself into the schemes of her husband, bringing to them a fresh group of supporters and a very original mind.

The highest good that life can confer upon anyone is to see a piece of work, begun in a moment of inspiration, prepared on a wall-considered plan, and completed to perfection by one's own efforts, and on this rare and happy achievement we offer our heartiest congratulations to Professor Debenham.

In No. 29 of The Polar Record he has told the whole story of the inception, rise and progress of the Scott Polar Research Institute of the University of Cambridge. It is a prose saga of high ideals and great deeds modestly stated in the graceful flow of words of which he is a master.

Many of us had deplored the waste of effort in so many great polar expeditions, each undertaken afresh with scant help from the scattered original records of earlier work, each ending with its members dispersed and the accumulated data scattered once more; but it was Frank Debenham alone who formulated the remedy.

We ought, in 1950, to be celebrating the centenary of the end of the Franklin Search: so great was the opportunity which one of the 1850 expeditions narrowly missed. As it is, we have nine years left to wait for that celebration; and a hundred years ago there were nine years left in which men were called upon to risk and sometimes to give their lives in the quest for the missing expedition, and in which the relatives of its members were kept in suspense, hope gradually dulling into resignation. The year. 1850 has instead the lesser distinction of being the first year in which traces of the Franklin Expedition were discovered.

On the right bank of the Thames, outside Greenwich Hospital, stands an obelisk of red granite bearing the single word “BELLOT”. For those (and they must be the vast majority) to whom this means nothing, a bronze tablet at the back provides a little more light:

To the intrepid young/BELLOT,/Of the French Navy,/Who, in the endeavour to rescue/Franklin,/Shared the fate and the glory of that/Illustrious navigator./(From his British admirers.)/1853.

Early in 1940 the German naval high command, acting through the German naval attaché in Moscow, opened negotiations with the Soviet Navy for the passage of two ships along the Northern Sea Route in the summer of that year. Agreement with the Soviet naval authorities was reached, possibly without the knowledge of the Soviet Government. The operation was to be carried out in the strictest secrecy, and a sum of 850,000 roubles (calculated on the expenses of the icebreakers involved) was to be paid by the Germans. Preparations accordingly went forward. One of the two ships was obliged for some reason to drop out, leaving only the other, the raider Komet, to make the voyage. The Komet was a converted merchant ship of 3300 gross registered tons driven by Diesel motors. She had a top speed of 14 knots. Special preparations for running in ice included strengthening the hull and screw and testing the steering gear more severely than usual: the special type of screw with removable blades, as used by Russian ships for ice passages, was not available. Her commander was Kapitan, later Konteradmiral, Robert Eyssen. He had worked in the 1930'sfor Hydrografisches Amt des OKK (Hydrographic Office of the German naval high command), and while first officer and later commander of the survey vessel Meteor had had experience in ice navigation off East Greenland. The crew numbered 270, but included no meteorologists or hydrographers. From the commander's point of view, one of the most useful members of the crew was his interpreter, a man referred to in reports as Agent Kroepsch, a person of unknown allegiance. Krbepsch's knowledge of Russian enabled the commander to get a clearer picture of the changeable and, to him, most suspicious attitude of the Russians towards the voyage, and to act accordingly. The voyage itself was remarkable because it showed that with the assistance of icebreakers and good ice and weather conditions very fast time can be made—in fact the voyage was the fastest ever made up to that date.

On 4 December 1835, thirty-four Hull shipowners sent to the Admiralty a Memorial statingthat, on 11 October, eleven whaling ships had been left by the Alfred, Hull, closely besetin Davis Strait between lats. 69° N. and 70° N., and longs. 60° W. and65° W., frozen in by the early approach of winter. It was stated that there waslittle prospect of their speedy liberation. The crews numbered upwards of 600 souls. Thevalue of the vessels was estimated at no less than £59,000 excluding the value of oiland whalebone worth £13,500. The ships were as follows:

A knowledge of the positions of the magnetic poles is important for the construction of magnetic charts of the polar areas. Charts giving the isogonals, or lines of equal declination, are needed for the purpose of air navigation over the polar regions, which is likely to become of increasing importance. The isogonals have a particularly complicated shape in the polar regions, because both the geographical pole and the magnetic pole are points of singularity, through which all the isogonals necessarily pass.

The Arctic Fox (Alopex lagopusand allied forms) is not only the chief furbearing animal in circumboreal regions, but also offers some fascinating ecological problems in its strong fluctuations in numbers, its extensive migrations, the diseases that appear periodically in its populations, and in the existence of two well-marked colour phases—the white and the “blue”—the relative abundance of which varies geographically in an extraordinary manner. Except in the U.S.S.R., comparatively little systematic study in the field has been made of this species by biologists, although it has been the object of several enquiries conducted through fur-trading and other organisations (of which the Canadian Arctic Wild Life Enquiry (Chitty and Chitty, 1941, 1945) is an example), and it has been observed in a scattered fashion by innumerable polarexpeditions.

The R.A.F. North Polar Research Flights were made during the month of May 1945 by the four-engined aircraft Aries. In sixteen days these flights covered more than 24,000 miles, the greater part of which lay within the Arctic Circle. The more important objects of the expedition were to investigate the problems of navigation in high latitudes, to make a magnetic survey in the region of the North Magnetic Pole, to test the reliability of magnetic compasses in its vicinity, and finally to observe the effects of polar flying on aircrew.

The Aries was built as a standard Lancaster heavy bomber, identical with those aircraft which fought the battles of the Ruhr and Berlin. The aircraft was modified slightly for polar flying. The range was increased to about 5000 miles by fitting extra petrol tanks in the bomb bays. Extra speed was obtained by removing the camouflage paint and by streamlining the nose and tail. Since the three heavy gun turrets and armour plating were not required, room was found for a further petrol tank in the nose, and a second astrodome amidships. The latter was used for taking sextant readings. Additional space in the tail was welcomed for stowing the emergency equipment.

There are places in the Soviet Arctic which on English maps and in English literature are called by three or four quite different names. The confusion to which this state of affairs leads is obvious. Yet it is not too difficult to establish a set of principles which might be generally used as a guide in putting Russian Arctic place-names on English maps.

Exercise Musk-ox was no isolated adventure, but the culminating test of several years of wartime work. In it, vehicles, equipment, and techniques of training and of air-supply, secretly developed during the war, were given an open test to ascertain their usefulness in northern Canada. Because the public had not been aware of this secret work by the services, Exercise Musk-ox was hailed by them as a new idea, but it would not have been possible had not the equipment and methods all been ready and proven before tbe close of the war.

So great had been these wartime improvements that none of those men best acquainted with the north country and with older methods of transportation believed that the ground party had any chance of driving 2600 miles without roads across the Arctic and sub-Arctic in less than 2½ months. Neither was it generally realised that the military purposes had already been served and that this was no tactical exercise but a demonstration of the soundness of military development and an experiment in applying it to peaceful pursuits in the Canadian Arctic.

A bound volume of letters in the library of the British Museum (Natural History) contains eight letters written by William Scoresby junior between 1809 and 1819. The earliest letter is addressed to Sir Joseph Banks, but, being probably only part of the communication, is unsigned. The remainder, all signed, are addressed to Everard Home.

On 12 February 1948, H.M. Submarine Ambush sailed from Rothesay, Isle of Bute, to carry out a prolonged investigation into the effects of “snorting” in rough weather and conditions of extreme cold.

H.M. Submarine Ambush, built since the end of the war, is a vessel of some 1350 tons surface displacement, 287 ft. long, embodying a large number of the latest developments including “snort” and radar. Apart from scientific measuring instruments, no special features were installed in the ship and her company, five officers and sixty men, was the normal crew with the addition of Surgeon Lieutenant-Commander W. H. Davidson, R.N., as observer for the Royal Naval Physiological Laboratory, and an assistant. No changes were made and no men were specially selected for the mission.

The Three-Power Conference on Aid to Russia between Great Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union opened in Moscow on 29 September 1941. The British and American missions, headed respectively by Lord Beaverbrook and Averill Harriman, travelled in H.M.S. London which left Scapa Flow on 22 September and arrived at Arkhangel'sk five days later.

By the Treaty of Paris of 1763, Canada was ceded by France to the United Kingdom, and what is to-day known as Newfoundland-Labrador first acquired a separate and political importance. Following the conclusion of the Treaty, the administration of the territory was entrusted to the newly appointed Governor of Newfoundland, and the loosely worded Commission which went with the change was in part responsible for the fact that in the succeeding 100 years Labrador was “tossed back and forth like a shuttlecock between the two rival claimants”, Canada and Newfoundland.