324 THE VOYAGE OF THE 'DISCOVERY' [Appx. 



Dr. Robert MacCormick, who was in charge of the geological 

 work of the expedition, landed on two islands lying off this coast. 

 The specimens he obtained have been recently described by Mr. 

 G. T. Prior ; they include basalt, palagonlte-tuff, phonolite and 

 muscovite-granite from Possession Island, and basalt from 

 Franklin Island. 



Dr. MacCormick considered the whole range to be volcanic, 

 but this is obviously not the case, for all the higher peaks are 

 pyramidal in outline and exhibit house-roof structure — a structure 

 which could not be produced by the eruption of rocks from local 

 centres. 



The French expedition under Dumont D'Urville, during this 

 international attack on the South Pole, obtained specimens of 

 granite from some low rocky islets lying off the coast of Adelie 

 Land, and it was thought that these strongly suggested the 

 existence of a continental mass of land. The fact that H.M.S. 

 ' Challenger,' in 1874, in an area about 2,000 miles from South 

 Victoria Land, dredged up gneiss and granite, probably dropped 

 from icebergs, was also given as evidence of the existence of a 

 continent, and it was thought that these rocks had been derived 

 directly from that continent. 



Many years elapsed before any additional information was 

 obtained. Captain Jansen, in the year 1895, returned from Cape 

 Adare bringing, among other rocks, a granitic pebble, which Dr. 

 Teall tells me ' has been crushed by earth movements, and must 

 at one time have formed part of an extensive tract of land.' In the 

 same year Mr. Borchgrevink obtained schistose and granitic rocks, 

 and these are said to show a strong similarity of the South Victoria 

 Land rocks to those of Adelie Land. 



The ' Southern Cross ' collection (Sir George Newnes' expedi- 

 tion, 1 898- 1 899) includes various plutonic and volcanic rocks as 

 well as slates and quartz grits, the latter being apparently the only 

 sedimentary rocks found by them in situ in South Victoria Land. 

 These have been carefully described by Mr. Prior in one of the 

 British Museum publications. The slates and quartz grits are 

 noted as occurring at the head of Robertson Bay. Being cleaved 

 they must have been subjected to earth pressures, and as such 

 pressures were probably long anterior to the stretching tension 

 which dislocated the Beacon Sandstone formation of the Royal 

 Society Range, these rocks would seem to be of a much older 

 date. 



