

NATURE 



[November 26, 1914 



left in charg-e of the wireless telegraph station, 

 has been surveyed and its natural history 

 studied. Here, and on the mainland, rare seals, 

 fish, and numerous birds were obtained, with a 

 larg-e collection of eggfs, most of which were pre- 

 viously unknown. Sounding" and dredging were 

 carried on, with excellent results, in the sea be- 

 tween Australia and the Antarctic continent. The 

 rocRs of the mainland appear to be largely 

 crystalline, probably Archaean, with some sedi- 

 mentaries (among which the Beacon Sandstone 

 apparently occurs), containing coal and carbon- 

 aceous shales. Capping them are great masses of 

 columnar dolerite (Fig. i). 



The climate of all the region explored seems 

 to be even worse than that in the Ross Sea dis- 

 trict. Blizzards are almost incessant, even in 

 summer : the average annual velocity of the wind 



^■^^^fc-g&'.V ^ 



-.^i-j.-'g^rt!^ jj- ' 



Fig. 



-The face of the Shacklelon Shelf. Each band-represents an annual 

 snowfall addition. From the Geographical J ovrtial 



being 50 miles an hour, and it often rises to 

 above 100 miles. In winter the air is full of par- 

 ticles of ice, and the electricity generated is so 

 great that hands, noses, and projecting parts 

 of the clothes show pale gleams like St. Elmo's 

 fire. 



This portion of the Antarctic continent seems 

 to be less mountainous than South Victoria Land, 

 but its snowfields rise inland to heights of from 

 2000 feet to above 4000 feet ; one of the exploring 

 parties attaining in that direction an elevation 

 of nearly 6000 feet. An ice barrier, like the well- 

 known one in Ross Sea (named Shackleton's 

 Shelf) defends most parts of the coast, and gives a 

 still more conspicuous instance than that affords 

 of projecting tongues of ice formed by the huge 



NO. 2352, VOL. 94.] 



land glaciers, which force their \vay through the 

 barrier, and protrude many miles, in one case 

 quite sixty, out to sea. In other words the 

 barrier exchanges the piedmont for the more 

 normal glacier type. But in other respects the 

 history of this floating ice corresponds with that 

 of the Ross Sea Barrier. Its upper part, prob- 

 ably all visible at its extremity, is not land-ice, 

 but stratified frozen snow, as shown in Fig. 2» 

 formed by the accumulated annual snowfalls : the 

 great part of the original land-ice having been 

 melted off by the sea-water. Thus the rock 

 debris incorporated in the lower part of that ice 

 (and in these regions there cannot be much in the 

 upper) must be distributed over the sea bottom — 

 a fact of which the advocates of the terrestrial 

 origin of all boulder clays will do well to take 

 cognisance. Thus a fine piece of work — geo- 

 graphical, meteorological, botanical and zoological 

 — has been accomplished, and Australia, as in 

 the case of the Funafuti boring, has done a most 

 notable service to science. 



T. G. Bonne Y. 



DETERIORATIVE CHANGES IN WINE.^ 



SINCE the time when Pasteur, In his "Etudes 

 sur le Vin," described a certain bitterness 

 sometimes occurring in wine {Maladie de I'arner- 

 iiime) as being apparently due to a specific micro- 

 organism, most of the forms of deterioration 

 which wine undergoes have been recognised as 

 due to biological action. Thus the Kahmig- 

 -x'erden, the Essigstich, and the Milch satire stick 

 of German writers, the poiix and the graisse of 

 French oenologists, are ascribed to the undesir- 

 able activity of various bacteria, moulds, and 

 veasts. Sourness, for example, is often due to 

 acetic acid produced by the ferment Mycodenna 

 itccti from the alcohol of the wine; whilst another 

 mycoderm (M. virii) is believed to produce faulty 

 A ine by attacking the cream of tartar and albu- 

 minous extractive matters. 



Some of the faults which may develop in wine, 

 however, are attributable to causes not primarily 

 biological. A certain kind of mustiness, for in- 

 stance, is ascribed to the effect of a malodorous 

 essential oil. The presence of iron salts, again, 

 has been recognised as a necessary condition for 

 the appearance of a particular kind of turbidity — 

 the casse ferrique — which in certain circumstances 

 may affect white wines. With this phenomenon 

 oxidation processes are known to be associated, 

 and the intervention of an oxidase, transferring 

 oxygen from the air to substances in the wine 

 not directly oxidisable under ordinary conditions, 

 has been suggested to account for the results 

 observed. 



Dr. Horace Brown has studied at considerable 

 length a variety of casse to which the white 

 wines of the Cape are particularly liable. 

 Although the wines may have been bottled per- 

 fectly bright, they have a tendency to become 



1 "An account of some investigations on the White Wines of South Africa r 

 an CEnological Study. By Horace T. Brown, /oioft. Inst, of Brewing, 

 vol. XX, No. 5. 



