Animals: New Fuel

Friends of seals, friends of penguins were incensed last week at a despatch from Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen, commander of Norway’s current Antarctic expedition (TIME, Sept. 9). Steaming at tortoise pace on his little ship Norvegia along the rim of Antarctica, Capt. Riiser-Larsen found time and thought hanging heavily. What if his coal should run out? thought he. Forthwith he busied himself with “a little experiment which I think will be of interest to our friends back in civilization.”

All around the Norvegia were herds of seal, flocks of penguin. Unaccustomed to man and hence unafraid of him, they afforded the Norvegia’s gunners easy, close-range targets. It was no trick to pile the deck with dead creatures.

Capt. Riiser-Larsen’s radio continued:

“We have been putting [seal] blubber under our boilers, and our success has been amazing. And now we are going to make a trial with penguin carcasses. . . . There will be no scarcity of raw material.

“It must not be thought from these experiments that the Norvegia is suffering any lack of coal. The bunkers are supplied with this for a long time to come. But our discovery is interesting to us. . . .”