Page:The Worst Journey in the World volume 1.djvu/347

234 third? There can have been little doubt whom we both wanted, and that evening Bowers had been asked. Of course he was mad to come. And here we were. "This winter travel is a new and bold venture," wrote Scott in the hut that night, "but the right men have gone to attempt it."

I don't know. There never could have been any doubt about Bill and Birdie. Probably Lashly would have made the best third, but Bill had a prejudice against seamen for a journey like this—"They don't take enough care of themselves, and they will not look after their clothes." But Lashly was wonderful—if Scott had only taken a four-man party and Lashly to the Pole!

What is this venture? Why is the embryo of the Emperor penguin so important to Science? And why should three sane and common-sense explorers be sledging away on a winter's night to a Cape which has only been visited before in daylight, and then with very great difficulty?

I have explained more fully in the Introduction to this book the knowledge the world possessed at this time of the Emperor penguin, mainly due to Wilson. But it is because the Emperor is probably the most primitive bird in existence that the working out of his embryology is so important. The embryo shows remains of the development of an animal in former ages and former states; it recapitulates its former lives. The embryo of an Emperor may prove the missing link between birds and the reptiles from which birds have sprung.

Only one rookery of Emperor penguins had been found at this date, and this was on the sea-ice inside a little bay of the Barrier edge at Cape Crozier, which was guarded by miles of some of the biggest pressure in the Antarctic. Chicks had been found in September, and Wilson reckoned that the eggs must be laid in the beginning of July. And so we started just after midwinter on the weirdest bird's-nesting expedition that has ever been or ever will be.