BRITISH ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION—SHACKLETON, 365 
and on the morning of March 8, from that position, we saw a new 
coast line stretching first to the southward, and then to the west for 
a distance of over 45 miles. We took angles and bearings and 
sketched the outline. Then we went north, and on March 22 reached 
New Zealand. 
The geological work of the expedition was carried on by Prof. 
T. W. Edgeworth David and Raymond Priestley. I have already 
mentioned matters connected with the Great Ice Barrier. Their 
conclusions in regard to other points are summarized as follows: 
(1) Throughout the whole of the region of Antarctica, examined 
by us for 16 degrees of latitude, there is evidence of a recent great 
diminution in the glaciation. In McMurdo Sound this arm of the 
sea, now free from land ice, was formerly filled by a branch of the 
Great Ice Barrier, whose surface rose fully 1,000 feet above sea 
level, and the Barrier ice in this sound, in areas from which the 
ice has retreated, was formerly about 3,000 feet in thickness. 
(2) The snowfall at Cape Royds from February, 1908, to Feb- 
ruary, 1909, was equal to about 94 inches of rain. 
(3) The névé-fields of Antarctica are probably of no great 
thickness. 
(4) The southern and western sides of the sector of Antarctica 
south of Australia is a plateau from 7,000 to 10,000 feet high, which 
may possibly extend across the south pole to Coats’s Land and 
Graham’s Land. 
(5) Ross Sea is probably a great subsidence area. 
(6) The Beacon sandstone formation, which extends for at least 
1,100 miles from north to south in Antarctica, contains coniferous 
wood associated with coal seams. It is probably of Paleozoic age. 
(7) Limestones, pisolitic in places, in 85° 25’ §., and 7,000 feet 
above sea level, contain obscure casts of radiolaria. 
Radiolaria, in a fair state of preservation, occur in black cherts 
amongst the erratics at Cape Royds. They appear to belong to the 
same formation as the limestone. These radiolaria appear to be of 
older Paleozoic age. 
(8) The succession of lavas at Erebus appears to have been first 
trachytes, then kenytes, then olivine basalts. Erebus is, however, 
still erupting kenyte. 
(9) Peat deposits, formed of fungus, are now forming on the 
bottoms of some of the Antarctic glacial lakes near 77° and 78° 8. 
(10) Raised benches of recent origin extend at Ross Island to a 
height of at least 160 feet above sea level. 
The fossil in Beacon sandstone found by the southern party in 
latitude 85° S. is described as follows by Mr. E. J. Goddard, B. Sc., 
Macleay Research Fellow of the Linnean Society, New South Wales: 
Longitudinal sections of the included dark masses give a homogeneous banded 
appearance of a distinctly organic nature. The banded appearance is due to the 
