ANTARCTIC LAND OF VICTORIA—ZIMMERMANN. 343 
In the same way great networks of crevasses are developed over 
15 to 30 kilometers in the offing of Minna Bluff and White Island. 
There, regularity and parallelism are so striking that one can not 
believe in the existence of a terrestrial base, which would certainly 
bring about irregularities of tension in the mass. Finally, and this 
is more important, the long voyage of Captain Scott was effected 
on a horizontal plane; the corrected reading of the aneroids leaves 
no doubt on this subject. The only indication of a rise in level ap- 
peared at the end of the journey; but they were then quite near land, 
at the entrance of the Shackleton Inlet, and this rise might be fore- 
seen. It is remarkable that no trace of foreign matter could be 
seen inclosed in the ice along the front of the barrier and no rock 
débris on the surface except in very close proximity with the land; 
yet this débris may be rare because of the chasms or gulfs referred 
to, which prevent the blocks from remaining on the surface of the 
sheet. Only where the ice rests directly on the shore, as at Minna 
Bluff or toward the Black Island, are there developed enormous 
moraines attaining a height of 15 meters, and the elongated faisceau 
of which ends in the bottom of the McMurdo Sound. These 
moraines, covering a surface of floating ice, have one singular fea- 
ture; they are composed of a series of cones of débris which are con- 
nected with one another, following the direction of the glaciary 
movement. In these moraines are found blocks of more than a 
meter in diameter, but erosion reduces these quickly into masses of 
coarse sand which the wind seatters and which, because of their 
dark color favoring the fusion of the ice, gives rise to little streams 
which are indirectly the cause of the cutting up of the glacial front of 
MacMurdo Sound into an intricate notched zone, difficult for the 
sledges to traverse. 
The great tabular antarctic icebergs can only come, Mr. Ferrar 
expressly states, from formations analogous to Ross Barrier—that is, 
from floating barriers. That is to say, that this class of glaciers is 
universally distributed throughout the Antarctic Zone, since the 
tabular icebergs are met with in great numbers in all oceanic regions 
around the southern ice cap. And, in fact, one can compare with it 
the west ice, that tongue of floating ice observed by thescientists of the 
Gauss to the west of their winter quarters, and also the terrace of 
partly submerged ice pointed out by Otto Nordenskjéld as belonging 
to King Oscar Land and prolonging the continent toward the east. It 
is probable that similar glacial formations, submerged in relatively 
shallow seas and of smal) extent, have accompanied the glacial 
epochs in Europe—the Irish Sea, the North Sea, the Baltic; perhaps 
horizon is rigorously horizontal. One can refer in this connection to the great 
panoramic view of Victoria Sella, published in F. de Fillippi, ‘“* La Spedizione 
di il Principe,” Luigi Amedeo di Savoia al Monte Sant’Elia, 1897, Milano, 
Hoepli, 1900. 
45745°—sm 190923 
