334 POLAR PROBLEMS 



but fortunately revealed to a scientist'friend and traded for a "pretty" 

 piece of rock. Education of the rank and file of a sledge party is 

 essential and one of the most needed polar reforms. No man should 

 be taken south who has not wide interests and a capacity for taking 

 up others. Every man should be an enthusiast in his own subject 

 and eager to add his quota to that of each of his companions. If 

 this fact is realized half the battle in making the most of the available 

 time and team is won. In this question of paleoclimatology especially, 

 constant, accurate, and detailed observation is the essence of success. 

 It is often argued that the old methods of exploration have become 

 obsolete, but this generalization is not true and is to be avoided. 

 It is correct to say that airplanes, snow tractors, and other means of 

 transport can be employed with great advantage by the explorer in 

 the Antarctic regions as elsewhere, but the old-fashioned dog-hauled, 

 even man-hauled, sledge parties will still be required for detailed 

 scientific work. Survey from the air can only be approximate at best ; 

 in the polar regions there are factors which will necessarily make this 

 method even less accurate than elsewhere. Just as in war, in spite 

 of the great development of the technical services, the infantryman 

 with all his disadvantages is still requisite if captured ground is to 

 be held, so in polar exploration detailed work can be carried out only 

 by ground parties who must still -work very much under the condi- 

 tions that have hampered their efforts in the past. 



Paleontological Significance of the Ice Ages 



The chief interest which Antarctic ice conditions will have for 

 man must naturally spring from their relation to the factors that 

 have produced mankind and have strictly delimited the conditions 

 of his life. While Antarctica has passed apparently from a uniform- 

 temperate to a frigid climate, the remainder of the world — now one 

 continent, now another — has been aperiodically visited by glacial 

 incidents which have profoundly modified the course of life. But for 

 the Permo-Carboniferous glaciation of India, Australia, South 

 America, and Africa, with the accompanying cooling of the remainder 

 of the earth, gigantic insects might have dominated the world. But 

 for the cooling of Cretaceous and Eocene times, it appears quite 

 likely that mammals might yet be insignificant tribes, leading a 

 precarious existence at the mercy of descendants of the Jurassic horde 

 of reptiles. Refrigeration has again and again involved extinction 

 of specialized races and vivification of more generalized and newer 

 types. Insects gave place to reptiles, reptiles to mammals, and — 

 to bring the history up to date — the dominance of man coincides 

 remarkably with the coming of the great cooling of the Pleistocene, 

 the effect of which upon the climates of the world is still apparent. 



