Scott Base, the New Zealand headquarters in Antarctica, is established on western Ross Island, some 40 miles from the mainland. The stretch of water (in summer) between them is known as McMurdo Sound. The base has seven flat-roofed, aluminum-sheathed huts designed as refrigeration chambers which keep cold out and warmth in. Their insulated doors are of standard freezing-chamber design and they open on to a covered way of arched corrugated iron which connects the main huts. One hut is a workshop-ablutions-survey office; another is the administration-radio station-cookhouse-mess hall-recreation-cinema unit. Another hut is devoted entirely to scientific installations; still another, the generator hut-garage, has a diesel engine delivering lighting and power both for domestic and for scientific use 24 hours a day, year in year out. Other buildings surrounding the Base are a small hangar, another garage, an auroral tower, and a husky dog maternity home. This list gives an inkling of how the base functions as a tiny self-contained town (“resupplied” each summer), with its industrial and administrative districts vying for space with its suburbs, the sleeping huts. Often the transitory personnel, those there for the field season, must sleep beside a standby motor or clacking electronic device. In winter the base contains but a dozen or so “wintering over” personnel who work in comfort and “spacious” conditions, but in the summer (the field and maintenance season) the base becomes a turmoil of incoming personnel consisting of scientific and survey parties preparing for the field. In some years, if the budget is favourable, the base is enlarged.

The New Zealand leader at Scott Base is invested with the powers of a stipendiary magistrate, coroner, and postmaster. Scott Base is the Ross Dependency's official commercial radio link with the outside world by radio and radio telephone, and in summer by letter and parcel post. All mail is franked here and stamped with Ross Dependency stamps. The New Zealand radio link, and all ship and air traffic, together with field-party radio schedules, are maintained by one man who, like the cook, is tied to his job winter and summer.

Personnel returning from the Antarctic are often asked how they enjoyed, or endured, the cold. The answer to this lies in alpine New Zealand where mountaineers or high-country shepherds often experience temperatures equivalent to those of the Scott Base summer, which fluctuate around freezing point (32°F). This is much milder than a northern United States winter. Summer, then, presents little problem to the adequately clad. In the infrequent windless conditions, it is possible to work out of doors in a woollen jersey, shirt, underclothes and tweed trousers–the form of dress affected by outside workers in New Zealand–except that multi-layered fabric boots (mukluks) are used when standing or walking in snow. For severe Antarctic conditions, the worker wears the anorak (parka with fur-lined hood) and trousers of synthetic material, often nylon, light, little-insulating, but windproof. Warmth of the body is controlled by the retention of bodily warmed air in the clothing, so that a slight breeze (2–3 m.p.h.) immediately cools one unless “windproofs” are donned to prevent the loss of warm air next to the body. Cold is rendered many times more intense with each mile per hour of wind speed. A still air temperature of, say, 20°F (12 degrees of frost) is much more comfortable than conditions at 32°F in, say, a 30-knot breeze. Wind, not the air temperature, is to be feared.

Lack of discomfort in cold is partly due to the extremely low humidity of the atmosphere. In Antarctica biting cold is absent because of this. So dry is the air that wet clothing, even though frozen, dries readily. Ice melts more by sublimation (the direct change from solid water to water vapour without the liquid stage), so that ice melt-streams are rare even near the bare rock “oases” of Victoria Land. Snow patches on rocky surfaces disappear with only a slight dampness temporarily to mark their previous existence. Wood is so dry that it readily breaks or shatters, and fire is a hazard in the tinder-dry atmosphere where the only water available is solid ice or snow.

The preservation of huts and stores, and seal or dog carcasses is remarkable as the huts of Scott and Shackleton testify. Tins of food lying outside for half a century are little rusted and, if they have been sheltered from the abrading gales, their labels are faded but readable. This land is drier than the deserts of Australia, Africa, or America.

In winter, Scott Base and Pole Station experience marked subzero temperature, –30°F and –80°F respectively which, with frequent gales or blizzards of 100 knots or more, and the winter darkness, limit outside activity. Moonlight and occasional windless conditions, however, allow the “wintering-over” personnel to move around the base and repair any damage to huts and radio aerials by wind and drift. At Scott Base the dogs are tethered outside on the nearby sea ice throughout the winter.

One result of the Antarctic low atmospheric humidity is the low precipitation. At Scott Base it is equivalent to a rainfall of but 6–7 in. At Pole Station it is only half this. This is less than that of the world's hot deserts. On the Ross Ice Shelf, accumulation is at the rate of approximately 8 in. per annum, but such scanty falls as this are sufficient to maintain the ice plateau as a 2-mile deep cap over the bulk of the continent.

The disc-shaped Antarctic continent, with the Pole as its centre, has three major features marring its symmetry–Graham Land peninsula (known to the United States as the Palmer Peninsula) facing S. America, the Weddell Sea embayment facing the South Atlantic, and the Ross Sea embayment astride the 180° meridian. During the “open” season, the Dependency is four to five days' sailing distance from New Zealand, or 10–12 hours by air. Removal of ice would reveal a Ross Sea embayment almost reaching the Pole and perhaps linking with the Weddell Sea opposite. The coasts of the Ross embayment are approximately those of the New Zealand Ross Dependency. This Antarctic sector is largely ice-encrusted sea, having to the east an indefinite, ice-concealed coast terminating northward in the King Edward VII Peninsula, and to the west marked by a long (1,000 – plus miles), narrow (50 – plus miles) coastal mountain range 5,000 – 18,000 ft in height. These mountains run the length of Victoria Land to continue along the west and south of the Ross Ice Shelf to within 200 miles from the Pole. This radially disposed range of Antarctica, traversed in polar journeys by Scott, Shackleton, Amundsen, Hillary, and Fuchs, dams the great ice plateau of Antarctica (9,000-plus feet), preventing complete ice inundation of the Ross embayment. Only comparatively minor overflows like the Beardmore Glacier (probably the world's largest in volume and length) cross the range barrier to feed the Ross Ice Shelf (130,000 sq. miles) which covers the southern portion of the Ross Sea embayment.

The Ross Dependency sector, then, is largely shelf ice and sea fringed to the west and east by ice-clad coasts, just within and paralleling the 160°E and 150°w boundaries. The bulk of the continent is buried deep below the vast ice plateau broken by occasional nunataks (peaks which project above an ice sheet), whereas in the west of the Ross sector the great range is a continuously exposed line of mountains from the Admiralty Range (inland of Cape Adare) to the Queen Maud Range (100 miles from the Pole). This range contains “oases” of rock, free from ice and snow, which are veritable “windows” in the almost continuous white cover. To date, mineralogical rewards in Antarctic exploration have been negative but, as if to compensate for the paucity of terra firma in the Ross Sector, this great range which contains a number of these ice-free areas, offers the best opportunities for geological investigation in all Antarctica.

The “occupation” of Antarctica can be broadly described as having three phases: (1) A reconnaisance phase beginning with Captain Cook and continuing in the explorations of whalers and sealers to the turn of the century; (2) an expedition (heroic age) phase climaxed by the Scott, Shackleton, and Amundsen sorties; and (3) the scientific occupation phase of today which was pioneered in the “heroic age”. Modern methods, developed to meet the requirements of the IGY programme, rely more and more on established bases, some permanent, which serve as scientific laboratories or as centres for summer field parties. By using aircraft, tracked vehicles or dog teams, these parties have furthered the primary exploration by survey, geological, and glaciological investigation.

Work in Antarctica today has three aspects: (1) The static, represented by scientific instruments and laboratories in the various bases (auroral, ionospheric, meteorological, seismic, etc.). (2) The mobile, which is field work concerned with penguins, seals, fish, birds, insects, and plants (algae, lichen, mosses, and plants of the sea) and the more spectacular field traverses during which surveyors, geologists, and glaciologists on long summer journeys explore the 5 million sq. miles of the continent. (3) The support, which is the annual maintenance, reprovisioning, and restaffing of the bases both by ship and by aircraft. This fundamental task has precedence over all other activities excepting that of rescue. Despite the growing reliability of voyages by sea and aircraft flights, there are always such hazards to be faced as storm, pack ice, radio blackout, early or late breakout of sea ice and barrier ice, and mechanical failure.

The Ross Dependency of Antarctica comprises that sector of the Antarctic continent between 160° east and 150 west longitude, together with the islands lying between those degrees of longitude and south of latitude 60. British exploration began with Captain Cook, and names closely linked with the Dependency include Sir James Clark Ross, Capt. R. F. Scott, and Sir Ernest Shackleton. New Zealand's political association with the Dependency dates from 30 July 1923 when an Order in Council of the British Government brought the territory within the jurisdiction of the New Zealand Government. By the Antarctic Treaty of 1959 no country claims actual ownership of any part of Antarctica, but New Zealand, like others, is held responsible for the administration of her sector. The responsibility is unusual in that there are no permanent settlers but, since the International Geophysical Year of 1957–58, there has been a continuous occupation of bases in the Ross Dependency sector by New Zealanders and Americans. The bases are irregularly disposed from the Pole (United States) to Cape Hallet (joint United States–New Zealand) at approximately 72°s. Scott Base (at approximately 78°s) is the main New Zealand Station and the administrative “centre” of the New Zealand Antarctic sector, notwithstanding the fact that the annual permanent establishment there is about a dozen persons. The United States main base, McMurdo, on western Ross Island 30 minutes' walk from Scott Base, “winters over” some nine times this number. The number of bases and the number of persons in the Ross Sea sector vary throughout the year, for the summer immigration increases the population by a factor as much as five or six. Other established bases are Little America and Byrd, both of the United States. Williams Air Facility, the “international” airstrip and local air base – is associated with McMurdo base and lies some four miles off shore of Ross Island on the sea ice. Permanency of settlement in Antarctica is unknown; no economic basis for occupation has as yet been found.

The New Zealand Antarctic Society was formed in Wellington on 2 November 1933 following a lecture given on an Antarctic expedition. As there was considerable interest in polar exploration, a meeting was convened to establish the society when certain objectives, which have remained constant over the years, were outlined. They included such aims as bringing together persons interested in the study of the Antarctic, stimulating public interest in the south-polar region, and offering assistance to the Government or other authorities in matters relating to Antarctic exploration and research. Another branch was established at Dunedin in 1936, but both went into recess during the Second World War. Wellington branch was revived in 1949 and Dunedin in 1950. Later, another branch was established at Christchurch, and there was also a short-lived branch at Auckland in the mid-1950s.

In September 1953 the society recommended to the Prime Minister that New Zealand should explore the Ross Dependency and take part in the IGY programme. From then onwards the society played an important part in urging New Zealand's participation in polar affairs, and success was achieved in 1955 with the announcement of this country's participation in the Trans-Antarctic Expedition. Since then the society has continued to expand.

The Antarctic News Bulletin, later shortened to Antarctic, gives recent information on Antarctic affairs, and this journal has a wide overseas circulation. In 1952 the society published a book entitled The Antarctic Today, written by various experts in Antarctic research. A similar volume Antarctica (1964) brings the scientific story up to date.

by Arthur Stanley Helm, M.B.E., M.A., Investigating Officer, Tourist and Publicity Department, Wellington.

Numerous tales of monsters, ogres, goblins and fairies, and weird “hairy men” who devoured unwary travellers and waylaid hunting parties have long been a part of Maori lore. Sometimes these stories were associated with certain localities of ill-repute which had to be avoided at all costs. Many caves, river bends, and pools, and places along the sea shore were feared because they were the haunts of the taniwha, awesome water monsters with man-killing tendencies. A host of legends told of the slaying of these reptilian monsters but, as no skeletal remains have ever been found, there is no support for the belief that the taniwha ever existed in New Zealand. In all probability such tales of water-dwelling monsters and other huge reptiles known as kumi were nothing more than distorted folk memories of the crocodile of the western Pacific or Asia. Of less frequent appearance in Maori lore were stories of legendary birds–tipua, omens of death such as Hine-Ruarangi which haunted the Whirinaki Gorge and was seen by the discerning before the death of a chief, and the hokioi, said to abide in the heavens. It was never seen by man and approached the earth only at night when the sound of its flight could sometimes be heard. Then there was the pouakai, featured in South Island legend, a huge bird of prey which carried off its human victims with ease.

Less improbable were Maori tales of the ngarara, lizards which were larger than the tuatara. In 1874 J. W. Stack recorded the testimony of certain prominent Maoris who claimed not only to have seen but also to have handled and eaten them. It seems that the ngarara, which frequented manuka scrub, varied in size from 2 to 3 ft in length and from 10 to 20 in. in girth. There was also a smaller ngarara, about 18 in. long, found in streams. The Maoris attributed the disappearance of the large ngarara to scrubfires and the attacks of cats and, added Stack, perhaps the Norwegian rat.

Meanwhile, stories of kumi sightings kept cropping up. As evidence of an early popular interest in the question, there is the story of Hugh Carleton one day in 1875, rushing excitedly into the office of James Hector with the remark, “At last we have really got it”. He was referring to the reported capture near Hokianga of a strange animal with six legs. To the satisfaction of sceptics a subsequent report claimed that it had been hacked to pieces beyond reclamation by its horrified Maori captors. A more precise sighting of a kumi was allegedly made in September 1898 on W. D. Lysnar's East Coast station, Arowhana. A Maori bushman was startled by the sight of a huge lizard some 5 ft long advancing towards him. The animal disappeared into a rata tree but the subsequent description matched that of the traditional kumi which, although ones well known in the area, had not been seen for at least three generations. Lysnar and party went into the bush and photographed the footprints but failed to disturb the animal, and the absence of any more certain repor lends weight to the scepticism freely voiced in the Gisborne press at the time. The Maori may have caught a hasty glimpse of an opossum, the first liberations on the East Coast having ante-dated the sighting. This renewal of interest in the existence of the kumi led J. W. Hutton to report briefly on two bones, one in the Otago Museum, the other in the Canterbury Museum, which had been found in 1874 in the Earnscleugh Cave, Central Otago. The former was the ramus of a lower jaw of a pleurodont lizard which might have been the extinct ngarara. The other was possibly the last cervical of a reptile, although it seemed to be too robust and too flattened for the rib of a lizard. It more nearly resembled the first thoracic rib of a mammal but, added Hutton “It is, indeed, unlike anything known to me”, and this is still the opinion of present day authorities.

Of a slightly higher degree of probability were stories told to the early explorers of the South Island of an aquatic, otter or beaver-like animal, the kaurehe or waitoreke, supposedly a denizen of Fiordland and the Southern Lakes. In Dusky Sound in May 1773 some members of the Resolution's crew saw a greyish, cat-like quadruped with a bushy tail. The two naturalists on the Resolution, J. R. and G. Forster, were decidedly sceptical as to its existence. Later, in 1844, some Maoris at the mouth of the Clutha River described to J. W. Barnicoat and D. Monro a beaver-like animal which inhabited the lake at the river's source. These stories were also heard by W. B. D. Mantell four years later. In 1861 Julius Haast, anticipating tales of the Himalayan yeti, saw tracks in the snow at the head of the Ashburton resembling those of the otter. That the “tracks” were a hoax is a possibility; they might also have been made by the Maori dog, kuri. Seven years later, from the Selwyn, a portion of the skin of the supposed kaurehe came into Haast's hands. The description and the locality make it appear probable that the skin came from one of the marsupial cats released by the Canterbury Acclimatisation Society in the same year. All the evidence today available concerning the existence of the “otter” has been carefully examined by J. S. Watson who has reached the conclusion that “… there is very little ground for any belief in the animal's existence; nevertheless a shadow of doubt remains and it would be unwise altogether to ignore the possibility however remote it may be”. And with that judgment one may safely leave all such stories of taniwha and kumi and those other strange creatures of Maori legend and lore.

by Austin Graham Bagnall, M.A., A.L.A., Librarian, National Library Centre, Wellington and Alexander Hare McLintock, C.B.E., M.A., DIP.ED. (N.Z.), PH.D.(LOND.), Parliamentary Historian, Wellington.

• Transactions of the New Zealand Institute, Vol. 7, pp. 295–7, Stack, J. W. (1874), and Vol. 31, p. 485, Hutton, F. W. (1898)
• New Zealand Herald, 19 and 29 Sep 1898
• andRecords of the Canterbury Museum, Vol. 7, “The New Zealand ‘Otter’”, pp. 175–183, Watson, J. S. (1960).

The Animal Industry Division of the Department (employing at present 50 veterinarians) is responsible for controlling infectious diseases of animals, for preventing the entry of exotic diseases and providing for their eradication and for offering an extension service in animal-disease control and husbandry. The Division is organised under a Director who is the chief veterinary officer for the Dominion. There are five administrative districts–Auckland Palmerston North, Christchurch, Hamilton, and Dunedin, each with a Livestock Superintendent who controls a district staff of veterinarians and livestock instructors

The Stock Act of 1908 and its regulations provides for the control and prevention of infectious diseases of stock. Certain dangerous infectious diseases of stock scheduled under the Stock Act are controlled by field officers of the Division. These officers also investigate deaths and outbreaks of disease among farm stock and they work in the field of animal husbandry to increase production and reduce losses. The Division runs the animal quarantine station on Somes Island in Wellington harbour. The prior permission of the Divisional Director is necessary before stock can be imported. The Government controls all meat inspection services. Veterinarians of the Meat Division train, examine, and give technical and administrative direction to the meat inspectors.

The Animal Research Division is organised round its several research stations. Wallaceville Animal Research Station, 20 miles north of Wellington, is the main centre for the investigation of animal diseases. Its sections deal with pathology, bacteriology, parasitology, biochemistry, and apiculture. A diagnostic section examines specimens sent in by veterinary surgeons and livestock instructors and collaborates in the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of stock ailments.

There is a maximum-security virus-transmission area near the station for diagnostic animal transmission of suspected exotic disease. Ruakura Animal Research Station, about 3 miles from Hamilton in the centre of a densely stocked dairying area, concentrates on the study of problems of animal husbandry, breeding, and nutrition, with particular stress on the interactions of grazing animals and pastures. This station has contributed greatly to present knowledge of these problems both in New Zealand and overseas. A diagnostic centre at Ruakura gives a service similar to that at Wallaceville.

Whatawhata, a hill country property 12 miles from Hamilton, is an out-station of Ruakura developed for the study of hill-farming problems. Manutuke, near Gisborne, is another outstation of Ruakura used mainly for studying field aspects of facial eczema and supplying material for pathological and biochemical studies of this disease. A diagnostic centre for the southern part of the South Island has been established at Taieri, near Dunedin.

by David William Caldwell, M.R.C.V.S., formerly Chief Advisory Officer (Animal Health), Department of Agriculture.

Veterinary service to the farming industry is provided by the veterinary club system, by private practice, and by the Animal Industry, and Animal Research Divisions of the Department of Agriculture. Commercial organisations also employ a few veterinarians as advisers.

For many years before 1946 some farmer groups (usually the suppliers of a dairy factory) had retained salaried veterinarians. In 1946 the Veterinary Services Act set up a statutory body, the Veterinary Services Council, to promote and encourage an efficient veterinary service and to ensure the training and employment of enough veterinary surgeons. The Council of 13 members comprises representatives of the Government, farmers' veterinary clubs and associations, the New Zealand Dairy Production and Marketing Board, the Meat Producers' Board, the Wool Board, and the New Zealand Veterinary Association. Five of the members are veterinary surgeons. The funds of the Council are derived annually from the three boards represented on the Council, with a Government subsidy equal to the total sum paid by the contributing boards.

With the help of council subsidies as well as a generous bursary scheme for veterinary students, the introduction of overseas graduates, and the establishment of a superannuation scheme for veterinarians, the club system has developed into a movement comprising over 60 clubs or associations. It employs 200 veterinarians. It gives throughout the country an excellent and steadily expanding clinical service. Thus the veterinary club system, pioneered and developed in New Zealand, has provided the farmer with a reliable clinical service and given the veterinarians who serve it a secure employment.

Since the end of the Second World War the number of veterinarians in private practice has increased markedly to about a third of the total in New Zealand. Most private practitioners are engaged principally in the care and treatment of animals other than primary-producing livestock–that is, mainly with thoroughbreds and with small animals. But an increasing number are, however, serving the needs of farmers.

Few draught horses are now bred or used; thoroughbreds, hunters, hacks, and ponies (with a very few draft horses) are the main horses bred and used in New Zealand. Their diseases are confined to the normal medical and surgical needs of rearing and managing them in a temperate zone. No unusual diseases are recorded.

And so with diseases of dogs and cats. These latter animals can be imported only direct from Britain and from certain districts of Australia.

Cestode infestations of dogs: The following tapeworm infestations of dogs give rise to intermediate stages in domestic animals and in human beings–Echinococcus granulosus, causing hydatidosis in sheep, cattle, pigs, horses, and man, leading to frequent condemnations of sheep and cattle livers and to recurring sickness and death of human beings; Taenia hydatigena, responsible for intermediate infestation of Cysticercus tenuicollis in sheep, cattle, and pigs; Taenia ovis causing cysts in the musculature of sheep, leading to condemnations of carcasses; and Multiceps multiceps, with its intermediate stage, Cenurus cerebralis, in the brains of sheep and cattle. With the passing of the Hydatids Act of 1959 and the formation of the National Hydatids Council, a national eradication scheme has been enforced. The scheme is based on denying dogs access to animal offal and on regular compulsory diagnostic dosing of all dogs. The results have been encouraging. The scheme should lead to the elimination of these parasites.