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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and in the warmer parts it is either forest or 

 steppe. Greenland, the home of the glacier 

 and the mother of the icebergs of the North- 

 em Atlantic, rises 9,000 or 10,000 feet above 

 the sea level, while the sea between that 

 lofty plateau and Scandinavia is the deepest 

 known in the polar basin, though it is sepa- 

 rated from the rest of the Atlantic by a 

 broad belt or submarine plateau connecting 

 Greenland across Iceland and the Faroes 

 with the British Islands and Europe. Ice- 

 land, Spitzbergen, and Novaya-Zemlia, the 

 latter a continuation of the Urals, are all 

 mountainous and full of glaciers. The gla- 

 ciers of southern Alaska are some of the 

 largest in the world. 



Aspects of the Antarctic Regions. The 



subject of antarctic exploration was dis- 

 cussed at the meeting of the British Associa- 

 tion. Mr. W. S. Bruce contributed Notes of 

 an Antarctic Voyage. Dr. C. M. Donald, re- 

 porting some observations made on the voy- 

 age, said that the antarctic regions differ in 

 many respects from the arctic regions, the 

 differences arising probably from diversities 

 in geological structure. Bird life is scant in 

 the south, ami the birds are of different 

 kinds from tliose of the north. The ice- 

 bergs, too, instead of being rugged and 

 irregular, are plateau-shaped, rising with 

 straight sides about two hundred and fifty 

 feet from the water, and often of vast ex- 

 tent. One was met thirty miles long. Two 

 of the steamers of the expedition worked 

 through the pack ice impenetrable to a 

 sailing ship and approached the sixty-fifth 

 parallel. Mr. Seebohm described the pen- 

 guin as being, with the exception of a few 

 petrels, almost the only bird found in the 

 ntarctic aregions. Penguins were so differ- 

 ent from all other birds that some had di- 

 vided the order into penguins and not-peu- 

 guins. The penguin was found almost to the 

 equator ; not only where there is a cold cur- 

 rent. Tlie Australian Antarctic Expedition, 

 much talked of a few years ago, is in a state 

 of suspense on account of the difficulty of 

 obtaining the money needed. 



TIic Place of Geology in Edncation. In 



the discussion, in the British Association, of 

 the Place of Geology in Secondary and Pro- 

 fessional Education, Prof. Greenville A. J. 



Cole urged that geology formed a subject of 

 such far-reaching importance that it should 

 be included in the general course for boys 

 and girls of about the age of sixteen or sev- 

 enteen. Every one should be capable of ap- 

 preciating his surroundings, and particularly 

 the past history of life upon the globe, if he 

 was to be able to pass judgment upon cur- 

 rent affairs and to play his part as an indi- 

 vidual organism. Geology was as funda- 

 mentally important as history, and tended to 

 modify very largely our conceptions of the 

 relations between what is called antiquity 

 and ourselves. In common with other natu- 

 ral sciences it encouraged a love of truth 

 where statements could be safely made, and 

 of reserve where assertions would be merely 

 dogmatic. The course suggested for all 

 pupils was one in which mineral details were 

 subordinated, except where they were impor- 

 tant in explaining the origin of certain broad 

 features, such as farniliar and local land- 

 scapes. The greatest stress for general pur- 

 poses was to be laid upon an outline of 

 stratigraphical geology and its illustration 

 by such beds, unconformitiss, etc., as might 

 be exhibited in the environs of the school. 

 The outdoor character of the study should 

 be insisted on ; and the fact that the broader 

 generalizations of the science were based on 

 the collation of local observations would not 

 be among the least valuable results of the 

 introduction of the subject into our educa- 

 tional systems. Prof. G. A. Lebour thought 

 that in teaching geology to students destined 

 to be engineers or to have charge of mines 

 it was desirable that they should have such 

 a knowledge of the subject as would enable 

 them, not to solve problems, but to under- 

 stand the grounds on which experts base 

 their reports. 



Finger Marks. In the British Associa- 

 tion Mr. Francis Galton gave a description 

 of his system of finger-print impressions 

 which had been recently introduced into the 

 Indian army. There is affixed to the nomi- 

 nal roll an impression in ink of the fore, 

 middle, and ring fingers of the right hand of 

 each I'ecruit. This plan is found very useful 

 as a check upon personation. Sir William 

 Herschel used the method with success in 

 Bengal for many years. If a clear impres- 

 sion with the finger tips were made, there 



