298 SCOTT'S LAST EXPEDITION 
posits of approximately the same period under slightly varying 
conditions. 
In the Royal Society Range (Lat. 78°-79°) the sandstone 
itself tells us a good deal. ‘The grains of sand are very well 
rounded, as though windworn, there is much false bedding, the 
shale bands are thin, and there are remains of fresh-water plants 
in these bands. From those facts we can postulate a low-lying 
area with sand-dunes or desert sand in the neighbourhood, which 
was collected and redeposited, probably by water. A semi-arid 
climate prevented any great amount of animal or vegetable life, 
for there are no fossils in the sandstone. There are, however, 
worm-markings, ripple-marks, and the casts of sun-cracks, all 
of which mean conditions such as now obtain in parts of the 
Gobi Desert. As far as is known, sea-water had no part in this 
great series of deposits. Yet the climate varied according to 
both place and time, for in the Beardmore district there are many 
coal beds and thick shale deposits, marking probably a humid 
climate and a marshy topography. ‘These conditions were re- 
peated in a smaller degree in the Granite Harbour district and 
to the north. Throughout the whole area there must have been 
rapid, if not large, rivers, for the sandstone in places contains 
small pockets and bands of coarse conglomerate—a sign either 
of coastal sea-action or of rapid rivers. 
For this period, therefore, we may not be far wrong if we 
imagine a land somewhat approaching in conditions the Southern 
Sahara or the outskirts of the Gobi Desert. —Too much emphasis 
must not be laid upon its desert character, however, for our only 
evidence for that is the wind-blown appearance of the sandgrains, 
and the absence of fossils in the sandstone itself. The same 
conditions probably held over what is now the Ross Sea and the 
Great Ice-Barrier, these being formed at a much later period. 
The Beacon Sandstone series is the most important yet found in 
that quadrant of the Antarctic, for it is not only the latest sedi- 
mentary deposit of any magnitude, but it undoubtedly has locked 
up in it great stores of fossil evidence which have as yet hardly 
been touched by geologists. 
In the absence of later sedimentary deposits, the more recent 
history of Victoria Land is somewhat hypothetical, but one very 
definite period stands out, marked by a geological phenomenon 
for which there are few analogies to be found in the world. 
