462 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION C. 



greatest length of 16 miles. In Tasmania, where at present there is 

 no perennial snow, much less any permanent glaciation, evidence shows 

 that in Pleistocene time glacial ice came to within a few hundred feet 

 of sea -level, if not down to sea-level itself. Evidence at Mount 

 Kosciusko, at Kerguelen Island, in the Chilian and Bolivian Andes, in 

 Patagonia, at Gaussberg in the Antarctic, and in Victoria Land in the 

 Antarctic, all points to a former greater extension of the ice fields and 

 glaciers in Pleistocene time than at present. Apparently one of the 

 few exceptions to this rule in the Southern Hemisphere is the Balleny 

 Islands. These, according to the accounts given by Captain Scott and 

 Mr. Ferrar, are now undergoing a maximum glaciation. The fact should 

 here be noted that, according to the observations of Ferrar, the Ferrar 

 glacier ice was formerly no less than 3,000ft. to 4,000ft. above its 

 present level, and yet, even now, the Ferrar glacier probably contains 

 as much ice as any glacier in the world. Captain Robert Scott records 

 the interesting fact that the snowfall in the neighborhood of Ross 

 Island is now only about 4in. to Sin. a year — that is 4in. to 5in. of hard 

 packed snow. This, if melted down, would, as the author presumes, 

 be equal to only about half an inch to three-quarters of an inch of 

 rainfall. The Antarctic regions are, therefore, at present suffering 

 from an impoverished snow supply, which accounts for the present 

 rapid dwindling of its ice sheets. Captain Scott suggests, in view of 

 his observations, that most of the snow is brought by warm southerly 

 winds, and that what is now needed, in order to augment the ice sheets 

 of the Antarctic, is not a decrease, but an increase generally of surface 

 earth temperature. An increase of temperature would mean more 

 heat available for producing vapor, as well as a more rapid atmospheric 

 circulation for quickly transporting such vapor from equatorial regions 

 towards the South Pole. If these observations are generally true for 

 the Antarctic regions it would seem that near the parallel of the Balleny 

 Islands, on the Antarctic Circle, that is near the point where the 

 isotherm of 0** C. comes near to sea level, glaciation is at a maximum ; 

 while further south still, where the mean annual temperature is con- 

 siderably below 0°, glaciation is waning, waning for want of snow 

 supply. In other words, the bulk of the snow is taken out of the atmos- 

 phere bv the time the moisture-laden winds have reached as far pole- 

 ward as the parallel of latitude in which the Balleny Islands are 

 situated, viz., about 67*^ S. lat. 



In the Northern Hemisphere it appears to the author that the 

 general evidence points somewhat in the same direction. Certainly 

 in North America the centre of maximum glaciation progressively 

 shifted from the Rockies to the Keewatin radiant west of Hudson's 

 Bay, t.ience to the first Labradorian radiant, subsequently to a second, 

 then to a third, each one progressively north of its predecessor ; while 

 at the present day the maximum region of glaciation has shifted back 

 into Greenland. This shifting was, perhips, due to progressive sinking 

 under ice load, the first great development of ice being as usual to wind- 

 ward. The evidence collected by Professors Gregory and Garwood in 

 Spitzbergen points to a similar conclusion viz., that Spitzbergen is 



