Page:Polar Exploration - Bruce - 1911.djvu/212

208 equipped the Scottish Expedition with a small machine for reeling in the piano wire attached to box-shaped kites of the Blue Hill pattern. Specially constructed meteorographs, made of aluminium, were carried up by the kites, on which a record of the vertical distribution of pressure, temperature, and humidity was graphically recorded.

While mentioning this high-altitude equipment on board the Scotia, it is appropriate to refer to the splendid services the Prince of Monaco has rendered meteorology in the North Polar Regions by the use of kites and balloons. The author had the advantage of accompanying the Prince on three of his voyages to the north-west of Spitsbergen, and of assisting him in making these observations.

"The launching of a kite," says the Prince of Monaco ("Meteorological Researches in the High Atmosphere," Scot. Geog. Mag., March 1907), "from a ship is always a delicate operation, and one which demands experience on account of the vortices found in the aërial wake of the ship, of which those visible in the aqueous wake are the image. Often when the apparatus has reached a height where it appears to be out of danger it may be caught by one of these risky vortices and precipitated into the sea. In stormy weather such a catastrophe may occur even after the kite has risen to a height of several hundred metres.