president's address. 155 



There are numerous volcanoes in the Antarctic Regions. 

 Altogether there are about five active and seventeen dormant 

 or extinct volcanoes, as far as I can learn from the somewhat 

 imperfect information at my disposal. The volcanoes of 

 Victoria Land show a tendency to linear arrangement. From 

 Mount Sabine, 9,500 feet high, to Mt. Melbourne, 15,000 feet, 

 the trend is sou-sou-westerly. Mount Erebus, 12,367, an active 

 volcano, and Mount Terror, 10,884 feet, extinct, lie almost 

 due South of Mount Sabine. Further north from Mount 

 Sabine the great earth-fold, on the septum of which this chain 

 of volcanoes is situated, probably bends a little westwards, as 

 shown partly by the soundings, partly by the position of 

 Balleny's Isle, an active or dormant volcano, estimated V)y 

 Balleny to be about 12,000 feet high.* North-west of Balleny's 

 Island the great fold trends perhaps to the knotting point between 

 the Tasmanian axis of folding, described in my address last year, 

 and that of New Zealand, the former perhaps running through 

 Royal Company Island, and the latter through or near Auckland 

 Island and Macquarie Island. The knotting point would pro- 

 bably be somewhere (approximately) near the intersection of the 

 60th parallel of south latitude with the 150th meridian of longitude 

 east from Greenwich. It would thus join the line of extinct 

 volcanoes along East Australia on the west,- and perhaps the 

 active volcanic zone of the North Island of New Zealand, or at 

 all events the fold which bounds that continent, on the east. 



Traced in the opposite direction, the volcanic zone probably 

 runs through Seal Islands, the active volcanoes of Christensen 

 and Sarsee, and through Mount Haddington, an extinct volcano 

 in Trinity Land, to Paulet and Bridgman Islands, active volcanoes. 



*Mr. C. E. Borchgrevink of the Avhaler Antarctic informs me that when 

 he was in the vicinity of this island in 1895 he saw no trace of the volcano 

 being in eruption. Sir James Ross, however, states (Voyage to the Southern 

 Seas, Vol. i. p. 272), quoting from the log of the Eliza Scott, " as we stood 

 in for it [Balleny's Isle, T.W.E.D.] we plainly perceived smoke arising 

 from the mountain tops. It is evidently volcanic, as specimens of stone, or 

 rather cinders, will prove." 



