June i, 191 6] 



NATURE 



281 



westward to an upper section, which has been 

 named the Taylor Glacier. The origin of the 

 glacier valleys has not yet been fully explained, 

 but the solution of the problem may be furnished 

 by the detailed geological and geographical in- 

 formation collected by Dr. Taylor and his 

 comrades. 



Dr. Taylor's special attraction to Antarctica 

 was the opportunity of studying the physiography 

 of an area where water action had been always 

 either absent or relatively insignificant compared 

 with glacial erosion. It is interesting to note that 

 his Antarctic studies have led him to reduce the 

 importance he had once assigned to ice erosion. 

 He now attaches more importance to the shatter- 



Taylor's observations. Thus he figures a hill 

 slof>e which appears to be an ordinary denudation 

 cur\-e ; he attributes this catenary curve to glacial 

 erosion, whereas probably most glacialists regard 

 the opposite denudation curve, which is over- 

 steepened at the end owing to the toe of the slope 

 having been worn away, as the characteristic 

 feature of glacial denudation. 



One item in Dr. Taylor's physiographic nomen- 

 clature is open to regret, since he has followed a 

 growing custom of adopting an ordinary German 

 term with a sp>ecial technical meaning. He uses 

 the term " riegel " for a rock bar across a 

 glaciated valley. In his first reference to the 

 structure he calls it a bar or riegel ; but after- 



FlG. 2 



-The field of crevasses (SIcauk) at the root of Mackay Tongue, January 6, 1912. Behind are the faceted sk}pes of Moant Allan Thomson. 

 Photo from the Flat Iron looking N.W. From '" With Scott : The Silver Lining." 



ing action of frost than to the actual erosive in- 

 fluence of glacier ice. The frcmt of the Antarctic 

 plateau which rises above the Ross Sea has been 

 hollowed into the great rounded depressions 

 known as corries or cirques ; and these features 

 have long been attributed by many glacialists to 

 the direct excavating action of glaciers. Dr. 

 Taylor, however, adopts the conclusion that they 

 are essentially due to the action of frost. This 

 explanation was first clearly advanced by Prof. 

 Cole in 1895, and though long rejected it has been 

 largely adopted in recent years. The indefinite- 

 ness of the characters used to distinguish glacial 

 from water erosion is illustrated by some of Dr. 



NO. 2431, VOL. 97] 



wards he uses only the latter. The word " bar " 

 is the recognised English term, and it is used in 

 geography, and there seems no need to introduce 

 a foreign word. German authors adopt the term 

 " riegel " because it is the natural word for them 

 to use in describing this structure; and there 

 seems no more reason why British authors should 

 call such a formation a riegel than whv German 

 geographers should call it a bar. It may be said 

 that the term "bar " is ambiguous, and can only 

 be understood by the context, but exactly the 

 same objection applies to "riegel." 



In reference to the general physiographic 

 Antarctic problems, it is interesting to note that 



