No . 134 The Trusty Servant
had to get hold of Emperor penguin eggs , and to collect these required a ‘ Winter Journey ’, midwinter being the time when male Emperor penguins incubate their eggs .
Apsley described the purpose of the ‘ Winter Journey ’ as follows :
‘ 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 ?.... It is because the Emperor is probably the most primitive bird in existence that the working out of his embryology is so important .... [ it ] may prove the missing link between birds and the reptiles from which birds have sprung .... And so we started just after midwinter on the weirdest bird ’ s-nesting expedition that has ever been or ever will be .’
Sadly dissection of the eggs did not establish the ‘ missing link ’ Wilson had hoped and recapitulation theory turned out to be nothing more than speculation . Nevertheless , something was learned about the embryology of the Emperor penguin , and the journey itself tells us what men were
prepared to endure in the ‘ Golden Age ’ of Antarctic exploration . Their motives were complex : a mixture of patriotism , pride and scientific progress : that they finished their ‘ Winter Journey ’ and survived – in Apsley ’ s case broken in health but at least alive - a combination of teamwork , luck and will .
The Apsley Cherry-Garrard exhibition ‘ Suffering for Science in Antarctica ’, 10 th -30 th November was sponsored by the Friends of Winchester College , and made possible by generous loans from Dulwich College , private lenders , and the Scott Polar Research Institute , Cambridge .
Humby and Goddard
Mark Pyper ( D , 60-65 ) discusses Notions and makes a confession :
There ’ s always something more to be said about Winchester College notions . In the older generation agony and ecstasy appear in equal measure at the very mention of the term . So this is important business . I quote from The Trusty Servant of May
2022 : ‘ The term Winchester Football is used universally to offend neither those who use the term Winkies nor those who would prefer to have a return to Win Co Fo ‘. Well , speaking as one who entered the School in 1960 when the term ‘ Our game ’ was passing gently out of fashion , ceding dominance to Win Coll Football , I could persuade myself of a testing day that any of the three terms employed by the editor are , to the mildest degree , offensive .
The debate over whether notions have been , and are , in permanent decline is as perennial as the stream running through the Warden ’ s Garden and a good deal less pure . We happy but declining few
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