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AURORA AUSTRALIS. the bowls and spoons which have been used for porridge, are cleaned in this alfresco way and used for fruit.

For about a quarter of an hour everybody is too busily engaged to be captious, but about the time tea or coffee are being passed round, they begin to find their tongues, and I sit down to my breakfast, which is stone-cold, beneath a fire of criticisms as to my fitness, or rather my lack of fitness for the post.

After breakfast I wash the crockery and tinnery, being allowed a pint of water and a couple of lumps of soda to do it with. Volunteers have been known to assist in getting the grease off the plates and in drying them, and it is possible to get through the work in about an hour.

It is a sight for the gods to see a well-known F. R. S, drying a wet plate with a wetter cloth, and looking ruefully at the islands of grease remaining, after he has spent five minutes hard work on it. I suppose that nowhere else in the world is it a common sight to see two geologists and a meteorologist washing up dishes as if they had been used to nothing else.

The above programme is repeated three times in the day, with slight variations at lunch, tea, and dinner, and is in itself, in my opinion, sufficient work to