472 ANNUAL KEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1908. 



The Antarctic Continental Glacier is reached only after sur- 

 mounting all these obstacles. From the summits of Brabant 

 Island most of the peaks were observed by the explorers of 

 the Belgica^ and especially by Von Drygalski, from the sum- 

 mit of Mount Gauss. But on the famous journey from Cape 

 Scott, in Victoria Land, the party succeeded only in travers- 

 ing about 300 kilometers inland, while Nansen in 1888 had traversed 

 the whole of the great Greenland Glacier. The border of this ice 

 at least has been directly studied. On West Antarctide it covers 

 Danco Land and King Oscar Land ; to the east its edge, gone over 

 by Nordenskjold, extends from the shore across the ice bank to 

 Christensen Island. It has a lofty slope, terminating in a great 

 depression, and the surface of the higher bank appears much more 

 united than the pack, with great series of blue-tinted crevasses at 

 regular intervals." In the vicinity where the Gauss wintered, accord- 

 ing to Von Drygalski, Mount Gauss appears no more than a small 

 break in the ice pack, which extends as far as the eye can reach, its 

 edge forming above the coast ice that white perpendicular front wall 

 already mentioned. A sounding made at the foot of the mountain, 

 through the fresh ice, showed a depth of 170 meters.^ Finally, on 

 Victoria Land, the continental glacier is lodged against the mountain- 

 ous coast barrier, as in the western part of Greenland, and it differs 

 from that in few respects; only four extensions of the continental 

 glacier have been located from Cape Adare to Cape Longstaf. There 

 occurred here an evident sinking of the surface of the land ice, which 

 Scott estimates at from 120 to 150 meters. Finally, it is to be noted 

 tliat the ice block on the islands is in the peculiar form, observed by 

 the Belgica and Francais expeditions, of half of a large mound, of 

 which the steep side is opposite from the usual direction of approach- 

 ing blizzards (here the northeast). To these enormous solid dunes 

 the significant name of " ice cap " has been given. 



ORGANIC LIFE IN ANTARCTIC REGIONS. 



The south polar flora has been studied principally on West Ant- 

 arctide. M. Skottsberg, the botanist of the Antarctic^ places its 

 northern limit at about latitude 50° S., and distinguishes it from the 

 austral flora, which is similar to that of South Georgia Islands. The 

 islands are in a class which would have as characteristic vegetation 

 15 phanerogamic plants, among them the high bushes of tiissok, 

 photographs of which show slender and ligneous stems, groujoed in 

 large bunches. The landscape resembles that of Tierra del Fuego 

 without trees. But the cryptogams predominate — 4: ferns, 26 lichens. 



" Nordenskjold : Op. cit., p. Ill 

 '' Yon Drygalski : Op. cit-, PP. ^ 



pp. 241, 311, etc, 



