332 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1909. 
certain documents for the reader’s benefit, all attest a disposition to 
do the work on a very liberal scale.? 
I, GEOLOGY. 
Victoria Land, to-day elevated and clearly delineated, constitutes 
a chain, or rather a series of mountain chains extending in a nearly 
straight line from 71° to 83° south latitude, for a distance of nearly 
1,300 kilometers. Some portions rise to an altitude of 3,900 meters, 
and it may here be remarked that none sink much below 1,200 meters. 
Victoria Land thus presents to the sea an imposing coast line in the 
form of an abrupt wall aligned at the foot by volcanic islands and a 
sea (350 to 500 meters deep, according to the soundings of Ross and 
the Discovery) which might well constitute a gulf. Doctor Mac- 
Cormick, of the Hrebus, believed that the entire chain was volcanic. 
The observers of the Discovery, which cruised nearer the coast, 
showed that this could not be so; the regularity and tabular aspect of 
the coast line and the readily perceptible lines of stratification indi- 
cating rather a plateau structure. Mr. Ferrar was later able to study 
close at hand a portion of the range which they have called the 
“ Royal Society Chain,” and to determine its geological structure. 
The subbasement of Victoria Land seems constituted of a plateau 
of gneiss and crystalline limestone which elsewhere forms, on many 
portions of the coast, a belt or zone of some 1,200 to 1,500 meters 
mean height, in advance of the great tabular escarpment so charac- 
teristic, to which reference has been made. These foothills, or 
“ avant-monts ” are themselves separated by a north-south depression, 
or rather by a series of north and south valleys from the mountain 
wall, perhaps 3,000 meters in height, which succeeds it, and is cut 
up into pyramidal peaks. This structure is very plain for a distance 
of 400 kilometers between Cape Adare and Cape Washington; it is 
found also in the Royal Society Range. A sort of piedmont or low 
foothill region lies in front of the bold escarpment of the chain and is 
separated from it by a valley, the Snow Valley, filled by a glacier. 
This platform of gneiss carries a series of beds some 3,600 meters 
in thickness composed, from below up, of granites, sandstone, and 
doleritic basalt. Mr. Ferrar noted in particular the escarpment of 
Cathedral Rocks forming the right bank of Ferrar glacier, as fur- 
nishing an epitome of the geological history of the region, with its 
base of gneiss, surmounted by granite and cut by granite dikes, while 
the upper horizons comprise a bed or sheet of dark dolerite capped 
“The full title of the book is: ‘“ National Antarctic Expedition, 19014; ” (a) 
Natural History. Vol. 1, Geology (Field Geology; Petrography). Vol. 2, 
Zoology. Vol. 3, Zoology and Botany. Vol. 4, Zoology; (b) Physical observa- 
tions; (c) Meteorology; (d@) Album of photographs and sketches with a port- 
folio of panoramic views. 
