ScHAW. — On Antarctic Research. 65 



Owning to the snowcap which envelopes the great antarctic 

 land mass, the nucleus of rock is only revealed in off-lying 

 islands or on the faces of high and bold escarpments, or 

 by the fragments of rock carried seavpards by icebergs, 

 and either obtained directly from them or dredged from the 

 sea-bottom where they have been dropped by the icebergs 

 as they melted. Thus the geology of the country is mainly 

 concealed from view ; but the outlmes and larger features of 

 the mountain-ranges are not obliterated in the high lands 

 near the coasts, for peak after peak with varied contours are 

 seen to rise one behind another towards the interior. The 

 snow winch accumulates on these mountain-ranges in Victoria 

 Land forms a vast glacier, which moves continually outwards, 

 and presents on the coast-line a solid perpendicular wall of 

 ice, probably from 1,200ft. to 1,500ft. in thickness, of which 

 150ft. to 200ft. is above the surface of the water and 1,100ft. 

 to 1,400ft. below. When the front of this great glacier 

 reaches depths of 300 to 400 fathoms large stretches break off 

 and float away, forming the perpendicular-faced, horizontally- 

 stratified, table-topped icebergs of the Antarctic and Southern 

 Oceans. Fragments broken from these great ice-islands by 

 collisions, mixed with salt-water ice, and accumulations of 

 snow, form what is known as the " pack," which at favour- 

 able times and places can be penetrated by properly-protected 

 vessels ; but the great ice- wall, along which Boss coasted for 

 three hundred miles east and west, is an absolute barrier to 

 ships, although there are places where a landing might be 

 effected and a winter station be formed, and one such place 

 was noted by Eoss, near Mount Erebus, and within a com- 

 paratively short distance of the magnetic pole, or where we 

 have reason for supposing that pole to be. 



Dr. Murray refers to the results of the deep-sea dredging 

 carried out by the " Challenger " expedition, and states, 

 " All over the floor of the Aiitarctic Ocean there is a most 

 abundant fauna, apparently more abundant than in any other 

 region of the ocean's bed. In one haul made by the "Chal- 

 lenger," in a depth of two miles, in lat. 47° S., the trawl 

 brought up (excluding Protozoa) over two hundred specimens 

 belonging to eighty-nine species of animals, of which seventy- 

 three were new to science, including representatives of twenty- 

 eight new genera." He says, " It is most probable — indeed, 

 almost certain — that the floor of the ocean as well as all pelagic 

 waters have been peopled from the shallow waters surround- 

 ing continental land, and here in the deep waters of the 

 Antarctic we appear to have very clear indications of the 

 existence of the descendants of animals that once inhabited 

 the shallow waters along the shores of Antarctica, while in 

 other regions of the ocean the descendants of the shallow- 



