These notes, which are arranged in no special order, represent some of the facts learnt and impressions received during this visit. I made an earlier visit to the same general area of north-east Siberia in October 1965.

The Permafrost Institute [Institut Merzlotovedeniya], Yakutsk

The Director, P. I. Mel'nikov, was in Canada for two months on an exchange visit. His Deputies are now F. E. Are, who was here in 1965, and I. I. Tuchkov, a geologist recently transferred from the Yakut Filial to take N. A. Grave's place. These two looked after me in the friendliest and most helpful way.

The Antarctic Treaty, which entered into force on 23 June 1961, has been widely welcomed. It marked the beginning of a new era in Antarctic politics and provided a basis for the further development of scientific co-operation. Article IX provides for the holding of meetings (generally known as “Consultative Meetings”) for the purposes of exchanging information, of consultation and of formulating measures in furtherance of the principles and objectives of the Treaty, including the “preservation and conservation of living resources in Antarctica”. The four Consultative Meetings held since the entry into force of the Treaty have adopted over twenty Recommendations on the conservation of wildlife, and in the short space of six years the Antarctic has been made subject to conservation measures which are more comprehensive than those in any other major region in the world. The seed sown in the Treaty has borne fruit in a remarkably short time. It is the purpose of this article to describe and comment, from the legal standpoint, upon these internationally agreed conservation measures.

In the five years or so since earlier articles on this subject appeared in the Polar Record, much has occurred. The present note, based on Soviet press and radio reports, 1963–68, aims to summarize the most important developments since that time in the region of the west Siberian plain. Administratively, the area under consideration falls largely within Tyumenskaya Oblast'.

Air photographs taken on biological survey flights between 1962 and 1965 have yielded counts of Adelie Penguin breeding colonies at Beaufort Island in the southwestern Ross Sea and Inexpressible Island on the Victoria Land coast (Fig 1). These colonies are remote from expedition bases, seldom visited, and too large for accurate assessment from the ground. Earlier estimates of their size are summarised by Taylor (1964). Methods of estimating colony size are discussed by Caughley (1960) and Taylor (1962). This survey is based on serial black and white photographs taken at optimal times of the breeding cycle; counts are converted to estimates of breeding population size using data from a ground study at the Cape Royds (Fig 1) breeding colony and from known patterns of breeding at other colonies (Sladen, 1958; SapinJaloustre, 1960; Taylor. 1962; Stonehouse. 1963; Reid. 1964).

The shape of the sea floor of the Arctic Basin is slowly being revealed by ice island programmes, icebreakers working the peripheral edges, under-ice nuclear submarine explorations and isolated ice landings by aircraft (Ostenso, 1962). The topographical features of the North American side of the Arctic have been studied by numerous investigators (Kutschale, 1966; DeLeeuw, 1967; Vogt and Ostenso, 1968), and are well documented. The Eurasian portion of the Arctic Basin is, however, less well known.

In the early days of United States activities at McMurdo, tracked vehicles were used for station transport of men and supplies. These functioned well, if slowly and expensively, over snow and ice but were impractical over land because of track wear. Wheeled vehicles were introduced but, while satisfactory over earth roads, very quickly bogged down in snow; this difficulty was to some extent solved by the substitution of high flotation, chevron-tread, or ribbon-tread (sand) tires, for conventional tires. By 1966, the Naval Civil Engineering Laboratory (NCEL) had developed high-strength, heavy-duty snow roads capable of supporting vehicles weighing up to 31 500 kg, and wheeled vehicles replaced tracked vehicles for station use.

28 October, Monday. Another grand day. During forenoon we packed all our sledges already for a start tomorrow if the weather is fine; in the afternoon we took the Ponies for a short stroll. The Camp just at present looks like a young township, sledges here, there and everywhere; tomorrow all being well it will be deserted except for 2 men who are remaining behind. These 2 men have got their work cut out also, they have to make a journey sometime next month to Cape Royds to study the bird life etc, ie (Penguins and Skuas), they have also to look after the Hut in general and stow all stores in the Pony stables.

Two giant icebergs are moving westwards along the coast of Antarctica in the Weddell Sea. They were conspicuous throughout the 1967–68 season in ESSA-3 satellite photographs supplied by the United States National Environmental Satellite Center to the British Antarctic Survey. The two icebergs were first unmistakeably seen during orbit No 4699 on 11 October 1967 and last clearly seen before the winter during orbit No 6408 on 24 February 1968. The leading iceberg, which is roughly 45 km by 100 km, was last seen moving out to sea westwards from a position about 100 km north of Halley Bay station. The second, some 70 km by 100 km, was parallel with Riiser-Larsen Ice Front in long 21°W, and separated from it by only a few kilometres of open water. Although there were periods of weeks in which there was no movement, presumably owing to the grounding of the icebergs on shoals, both moved some 500 km along the coast in four months.

As architects for the extensions of the Scott Polar Research Institute in Lensfield Road, Cambridge, we have been asked to supply a description of the building.

The original Institute building, which was opened in November 1934, was designed by Sir Herbert Baker, R. A. It contained a museum on the ground floor, a library on the first floor, a picture gallery above and a few offices or research rooms. It is a small formal classical block, designed in a carefully detailed Georgian manner, and built of attractive warm buff-coloured facing bricks with limestone dressings and a brown tiled roof.

This paper describes the background and analyzes the economic structure of that part of the shipping industry engaged in transporting cargo in ice-infested waters. The polar trade is a small sector of the ocean transportation market and a relatively recent development as a distinct service, though ice-strengthend ships and icebreakers have been in operation for over one hundred years.

Domesticated reindeer are not indigenous to North America. Between the years 1892 and 1902, some 1 280 reindeer were imported into western Alaska from Siberia as a supplemental food item for the Bering Strait Eskimo, a novel attempt to introduce a herding technology among hunting societies. Very little is known about the experiences of Eskimo reindeer herdsmen or about the probable success or failure of this particular approach to the economic and social development of remote Arctic regions.