The following notes on the stay of the Ross Expedition in Van Diemen's Land have been prepared from the diaries of Lady Jane Franklin, which were recently bequeathed to the Scott Polar Research Institute under the will of Miss Jessie Lefroy, a niece of Miss Sophia Cracroft. Miss Cracroft was herself the niece of Sir John Franklin and the lifelong companion of Lady Jane.

Frostbite and the kindred conditions, trench foot, immersion foot and shelter foot, are almost unknown in England in time of peace. In time of war they suddenly acquire significance. In the war of 1914–18, 84, 670 cases of the first two occurred in the British Army alone; the other two had not then been recognised. Yet in many units cases were few, and in the North Russian campaign between September 1918 and September 1919, only forty-eight men were attacked. They are largely preventable conditions.

It is only within comparatively recent years that the problem of conserving the game resources of the Northwest Territories has become a matter requiring the serious attention of those responsible for the administration of the Territories. The slow development of a crisis arose from the lack of co-ordinated knowledge and from the assumption that a sparse human population scattered over an immense area would not necessarily lead to any serious depletion in the numbers of wild animals. Fortunately investigation was begun and a measure of control effected in time; otherwise the story of the plains buffalo might have been repeated in the barren-ground caribou, as it was to a large degree in the musk ox, which are now reduced on the mainland to a few small herds within or close to the Thelon Game Sanctuary.

The Polar Record, No. 22, July 1941

Page 430, line 11. For Long. 180° 25′ W. read Long. 108° 25′ W.