18 PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 



attained by an aeroplane is now given as 10,979 metres, which 

 is not far from double the experimental result. In this con- 

 nection it may be interesting to mention that the greatest 

 depth reached by boring is in Silesia and amounts to 7,350 feet. 



GEOGRAPHY. 



One important result of the war has been a great deal of 

 alteration in the political geography of Europe, into the details 

 of which I clo not propose to enter, as it hardly comes within 

 the limits of either Natural History or Archaeology. Though 

 the world may be considered now to be well known compared 

 with what it was 50 years ago, such remote and difficult spots 

 as the N. and S. Poles even having been reached, there seems 

 at present to be no lack of enthusiasm for expeditions of 

 exploration. Amundsen is proposing a five years drift in the 

 ice in the Arctic circle, having been for some time cruising 

 there for that purpose. An expedition has been organized at 

 Oxford to visit Spitzbergen this summer to investigate its 

 ornithology, botany and palaeontology, and to ascend some of 

 the unsealed peaks. A Danish Arctic expedition is also in 

 progress. It was found by the Canadian Arctic expedition 

 (1913-18) that the tides in that region were generally less than 

 1ft. and rarely lift. At the head of the Amundsen gulf the 

 tide occasionally rose 2ft. A British expedition has gone to 

 survey certain unexplored regions in the Antarctic circle, and 

 on its return, it is intended to develop a still more elaborate 

 one in which a large aeroplane will take part. Preparations 

 are being made for an attempt to ascend Mount Everest, but 

 I cannot imagine that this will be more than very partially 

 accomplished. With help from the Chinese, the American 

 Museum of Natural History is sending out an expedition to 

 work out the fauna and flora, including I believe palaeontology, 

 of the interior of China, Central Asia, Manchuria and Kamchatka, 

 about which very little appears to be known. The results of 

 a similar expedition from the same museum, which spent 

 more than six years in the Congo and returned in 1915 with 

 120,000 Zoological specimens, besides those in other branches, 



