At the Mansion House yesterday week, Sir G. Nares admitted
that he had not provided the sledge expeditions in his Arctic voyage with a ration of lime-juice for each man, but had provided only -enough for use as an occasional medicine, and he justified this prac- tice by the precedents of former expeditions. In the first place, how- ever, the precedents of expeditions of twenty-three years pre- viously are hardly adequate, the danger and the cure of scurvy being better understood now than then ; and in the second place, it does not appear to be true that at least in all the considerable sledge expeditions of the Arctic voyage of 1852-4 this dangerous economy was adopted. At least Commander Herbert, writing to Tuesday's Times, shows that he himself com- manded a sledge party in each of the years of the Arctic expedi- tion of 1852-4, and he encloses a leaf from his journal detailing the scale of the victualling of the sledge parties. In that scale of victualling + oz. of lime-juice was allowed for each person per day. This sufficiently proves that even in that expedition this wise precaution was not forgotten, and unquestionably Sir Cr. Nares made a serious mistake in providing no ration of lime-juice for his sledge parties of last year. The objection made, that too much fuel would have been necessary to melt it and to melt the snow for diluting it, can hardly be seriously intended. Some drink was necessary for the men, and why that drink should not have been of a kind to secure them against disease, it is impossible to imagine.
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