ANTARCTIC LAND OF VICTORIA—ZIMMERMANN. 3338 
by yellow sandstone (the “ Beacon sandstone”). This aspect is 
presented with great uniformity, the pronounced color of the doler- 
ite forming a contrast apparent even in the photographs, with the 
clear, often yellow or white tints of the sandstone. It is, nevertheless, 
ordinarily the strikingly horizontal sheets of the dolerite which con- 
stitute the crown of the cliffs and whence they derive their tabular 
aspect. The dolerite frequently alternates, moreover, in thin sheets 
of surprising regularity with the beds of sandstone, from which they 
are scarcely separable. Mr. Ferrar thinks that these volcanic out- 
pourings have formed a continuous sheet, at present more or less 
eroded, and he calls attention, above all, to the fact that in spite of 
their striking regularity the beds have, beyond doubt, an intrusive 
origin, and there is nothing to indicate that they were superficial 
outpourings (lava flows). Mineralogically, this rock greatly re- 
sembles, according to G. T. Prior, the augitic diorite which, in form 
of dikes, cuts the granulite and gneiss of meridional India. The 
Beacon sandstone has a total thickness of about 600 meters. It is 
distinguished by the very evident stratification and horizontality 
of its bed, by a remarkable uniformity of texture, and by the vertical 
escarpments which it affords. These beds are in places impregnated 
by irregular dark bands, due to carbonaceous matter. Samples 
collected by Mr. Ferrar in the cliffs overhanging the glacier bearing 
his name were examined by the paleobotanist, Mr. Newell Arber. 
Unfortunately the impressions were too greatly altered to permit the 
drawing of exact botanical conclusions therefrom; but they were, 
nevertheless, regarded as of vegetable origin, though no opinion was 
rendered as to geological age. One can only draw the conclusion 
that at some earlier, undetermined period, plant life flourished in 
latitude 77° 30’ south. 
The complex of sandstone and dolerite of Victoria Land has been 
studied in detail only in the Royal Society Range on an area that Mr. 
Ferrar estimates at 7,000 square kilometers; but it probably occupies 
as vast an extent to the south as to the north. The reports and photo- 
graphs of Lieutenant Shackleton, and, above all, the marvelous pano- 
ramic drawings of Dr. E. A. Wilson, show that even above 80° of latitude 
the same horizontality of the escarpment prevails. During a period 
of some weeks the three men of the southern expedition skirted along 
this escarpment, the summits of which appeared, according to the 
angle of view either as table-land or as pyramidal peaks. These “ mas- 
sifs,” of which Mounts Longstaff and Markham, latitude 83° south, 
mark the terminal boundary, with altitudes of 3,150 and 4,600 
meters, are ordinarily upward of 2,000 meters. They are divided into 
five distinct groups by four fjords or inlets into which debouch 
immense glaciers and to which were given the names of the officers 
of this expedition. The four inlets, then, are, from north to south, 
