-five years. Liberal grants for this work are being put at our disposal, 

 covering also the editing and publishing of a special report from the 

 Ro3-al Societ}- of Goteborg. It is our hope that the new technique, which 

 has now passed through crucial tests, will be used also by other nations 

 on the vast and almost unbroken field of research offered by the deep 

 ocean bed, its morphology, its stratigraphy and geochemistry, and its 

 biology. During our cruise the latter subject was reserved for the last 

 three months' cruise in the Atlantic Ocean, where deep-sea trawlings 

 were made under the supervision of Dr. O. Nybelin, from the Natural 

 History Museum of Goteborg, assisted by Dr. Kullenberg, who also 

 mastered the coring operations with his sampler. 



It appears that in the coming geophysical and biological work in 

 great ocean depths one of the most important fields is the central Pacific 

 Ocean centred round the Hawaiian Islands and Tahiti. Honolulu seems 

 to be designed to become the centre of this research. The most important 

 jproblems are, according to my notion : — 



A. The chronology of the deep-sea sediments using radioactive and 



biological methods (analysis of foraminiferal shells) (6), possibly 

 also volcanic ash-horizons, cosmic spherules, and, near islands 

 with intense vegetation, pollen anatysis. 



B. The prevalence of lava beds in great depths and other signs of 



submarine volcanic activity. 



C. The morphology of the bottom surface and of the substratum 



beneath it as revealed by echo-soundings, preferably by 

 depth charges exploding helow the sediment surface. 



D. The temperature gradient in the deep sea bottom (one of the most 



important tasks of modern geophysics according to Professor 

 Jeffereys, of Cambridge). 



With regard to the last point it had been my intention to measure 

 the geothermal gradient at various points along the route, for which 

 purpose a special geothermometer, 11 metres in length and registering 

 the difference in temperature between the surrounding sediment in this 

 depth and the isothermal bottom w^ater above it, had been constructed. 

 Owing to repeated failures of the clockwork to work at the very low 

 temperatures met with only two attempts both in the equatorial Pacific 

 were successful. Both afforded unexpectedly high \'alues of the 

 geothermal gradient — viz., 22 and 26 metres per 1° centigrade 

 respectively, which would impty a higher value of the geothermal 

 current in the ocean bed than on the continents (possibly another 

 indication of latent submarine volcanism). It would be rash to draw 

 any inferences from these two isolated values until more material has 

 been calculated by the same or by other methods. 



Finally, it should be mentioned that the expedition doctor, J. Eriksson, 

 of Eskilstuna, Sweden, a keen naturalist, made botanical excursions on 

 the different islands where the " Albatross " touched, hke James Island 

 in the Galapagos Group, Nukuhi\'a in the Marquesas (where borings 

 in a peat bog on the rarely visited Tovii Plateau were carried out by 

 Dr. G. Arrhenius, geologist to the expedition), on Tahiti and on Ternate 

 where the Pacific phase of the cruise came to its end on 26th January, 

 1948. 



. 189 



