MYSTERY OF NATURE

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 63, 1 April 1937, Page 3

MYSTERY OF NATURE

-Own Correspondent)

Britons' Quest in Inca Lake CAMBRIDGE EXPEDITION

(By Air Mail—

LONDON, March 36. With hopes of solving one of na* ture 's most ancient ' mysteries, five young Cambridge graduates are leaving England this week, bound for fheland where the old dare not go! Thei* destination is Lake Titicaca, one of tho highest, motet remote of the world 'a great lakes, situated in Bolivia. It is on a 12,500-f t. high plateau, betweeB two spurs, of the Andes, and is a jewel set in the heart of the Inca.Empire. But the young adventurera are thinking neither of Inca nor its - treasureg. In Titicaca, whose slioies gave Britain its first potato, they hope to solve otVer secrets of more lasting benefit to mankind — the secret, for instance, of how prawns and crabs, rare fish and sheUfish,' came from fhe sea to loc'ffs hundreds of miles inland; and the secret of how each lake has evolved its own peculiar species. •These, among other things, are the posers they have set themselve's to solve. And these are the posers put to the raan mOst likely to know — the man who organised the expedition on behalf of the Percy Sladen trustees. "How," Professor Gardiner wae asked, "do the fish reach these inland lakes— walk?" "No," and he chuckled. "They don't walk, One theory is that tbey fly. Eggs of shellfish, for instance, are sticky, and attach themselves to the legs of birds, which 'carry them in their fiight to waters inland. Natives themselves, however, may have stocked the lake for the ' purposes of food. "The expedition will' Study. the marine life • of -Lake Titicaca in a region where there is - little • vegetation, and whieh has been. praetically. uninfluenced by man. . . , •. ■ "It is essentially a young man's expedition. . /The . old dare • not go there. At'such a high altitude they, would be bes'et* by blood-pressure and kindred ills. "The party will ^settle, on the lake, which has an area of . 3,000 square miles, for tsix months. "Dangers? Yes, there will be dan* gers. The party, in its small n.ptorboat, may be compelled to face the tre* mendous storms which sweep without warning across the surface of the lake. " , The expedition will be under the lea-

dership of H. C. .Gilson, who was one of the oceanographers with the Murray Expedition to the Indian Ocean three years ago. He will be accompanied by T. G. Tutin, H. P. Moon, C. J. Craw f ord and Dr. H. E. Hinton. - ..v