22 THE CLIMATE OF AUSTRALASIA 



30 S., the depth instead of being 2700 fathoms 

 as was expected, was only 1 100 fathoms. 



The German Antarctic Expedition of 1901- 

 1903 under Professor Drygalski has confirmed 

 the general conclusions of the Valdivia as to 

 the great depth of parts of the Southern Ocean, 

 and it has discovered further ridges upon its 

 floor. * 



The "deeps" now proved to exist in the 

 Southern Ocean and the transverse ridges 

 found in it and in the Indian Ocean are of great 

 meteorological importance. The deep basins 

 are reservoirs for the cold waters, formed by 

 the melting of the Antarctic ice. The deep, 

 cold water is sucked northward by the move- 

 ment of the surface waters ; and this deep sea 

 horizontal drift is deflected by the submarine 

 ridges into vertical currents, which reduce the 

 temperature of the surface waters. 



The existence of deeps in the Southern 

 Ocean is not geographically surprising. The 

 coast of Southern Australia is no doubt of the 

 same geographical type as that of the opposite 

 coast of Antarctica. Twelve miles off Warrnam- 

 bool the sea floor plunges rapidly from the 

 coast shelf, the edge of which is only 30 fathoms 

 deep, to the depth of 2600 fathoms ; and a 

 similar geographical structure may be reasonably 

 expected in Wilkes Land the opposite coast 

 of the Antarctic continent. In the Southern 



*A list of the soundings made by that expedition between Cape Town 

 and Kerguelen is given in Appendix No. II, p. 93. 



