ANTARCTIC LAND OF VICTORIA—ZIMMERMANN. 339 
it does with the snow what the desert wind does with the sand and the 
loess ; it reduces it to an impalpable powder which it drives about un- 
ceasingly, darkening the atmosphere and forming dunes of it, which it 
then destroys and drives bodily into the sea. Thus it happened that 
a sledge party was held up six days and a half on the edge of the 
inland ice by a tempest howling at the rate of 80 kilometers an hour 
and so charged with snow dust that objects 10 meters away could not 
be distinguished. One will appreciate much better the extent to 
which such a storm can retard the rate of growth of the Victorian 
glaciers when it is known that a day without a driving snow is an 
exception. 
Mr. Ferrar, as well as Mr. J. Gunnar Andersson of the Norden- 
skj6ld expedition, attributes to the wind a good share in the diminu- 
tion of the antarctic glaciation. We believe, nevertheless, that there 
must be a much more general cause. Nothing indicates, indeed, that 
this action of violent winds carrying to the sea a notable part of the 
fallen snow is not a very ancient and fundamental phenomenon of the 
antarctic climate. It has by no means prevented glacial phenomena 
from attaining proportions which have elsewhere no counterpart. 
This local peculiarity would also not account for the singular con- 
cordance of the retreat of the antarctic glaciers with the diminution 
of glaciers all over the earth. 
The observations that we have just summed up are applicable on 
the whole to the only group of glaciers which have been thoroughly 
studied on the antarctic continent—that of the great Glacier Ferrar 
and its satellite or its analogous Koettlitz, Snow Valley, and Blue 
Glacier. It is the principal merit of Mr. Ferrar to have studied 
carefully, from the glacialist’s point of view, a portion of the long 
range of coast which is presented by Victoria Land for a distance 
of 1,300 kilometers. 
It seems that the Ferrar glacier is a type frequently reproduced. 
The abrupt wall of Victoria Land is dissected by a large number of 
inlets, of valleys both broad and deep, into which run at a singularly 
low level glaciers uniformly emissaries of the inland ice. According 
to Mr. Scott very few of these emissaries could possibly be active. He 
divides them into two classes, living emissaries and dead glaciers. 
For a distance of 11 degrees of latitude from Cape Adare to Mount 
Longstaff, Mr. Scott recognizes only four active glaciers serving 
as a channel of discharge for the inland ice. The first probably 
empties into Lady Newnes Bay; the second issues at about 75° lati- 
tude south; finally, the last two observed during the trip toward 
the south probably filled the two large valleys of the Barne and 
Shackelton inlets. The Ferrar glacier, on the other hand, seemed 
to him a type, gigantic, of the dying glaciers. Its ancient limits 
have been recognized up to a height of 900 to 1,200 meters. It is 
