August ii, 1910] 



NATURE 



167 



■was pre-eminent, it was that to which this work 

 relates. Upon it hangs a great number of collateral 

 industries, and their prosperity is bound up together 

 and is mutually dependent. We had abundant stores 

 of most things we needed to extend and develop this 

 industry, and whatever else we required our oversea 

 trade enabled us to procure. That supremacy is 

 challenged. Newer methods have undermined the 

 position which the industry enjoyed with us for so 

 many vears, and in which such large amounts of 

 British capital are still locked up. So long as we 

 were concerned with the application of the simplest 

 chemical principles we could hold our own by virtue 

 of our natural advantages. Immediately we were 

 confronted by new processes involving more recondite 

 principles, questions of chemical dynamics, and 

 abstract considerations of mass-actions, reversible re- 

 actions and the like, our manufacturers were power- 

 less ; nor were they able to find in this country the 

 help thev needed. Some of them eventually found it 

 in imported polytechnically trained German and Swiss 

 chemical engineers — for the most part university men 

 with post-graduate technical training — men that the 

 German and Swiss systems produce in abundance. 



This system of fighting our industrial battles, in fact, 

 resembles that on which decadent Rome depended for 

 her national existence, and which eventually proved 

 her ruin. It is true, we are beginning to wake up, 

 and sporadic efforts are being made in various direc- 

 tions to rouse the country from its lethargy. Large 

 sums of money are being spent, but whether always 

 wisely is very doubtful. Anything like control, or 

 action directed from outside, is resented, for there is 

 no controlling authority armed with the necessary 

 powers, or, even if it were armed, commands 

 general confidence. We can only hope that "we shall 

 worry through somehow," but if we do, it will only 

 be, as hitherto, by the expenditure of a vast amount 

 of fussy energy, much delay, and waste of money 

 and means. 



SOUNDING ROUND THE ANTARCTIC 

 CONTINENT. 

 Deutsche Siidpolar-Expedition, 190 1-3. Band ii., 

 Geographie und Geologie. Heft vi.. Die Grund- 

 proben der Deutschen Siidpolar-Expedition, 1901-3. 

 By E. Philippi. Pp. 415-616 + xxxi-xxxiii plates. 

 (Berlin : Georg Reimer, igxo.) 



THIS memoir forms the sixth division of the second 

 volume — that devoted to geography and geology 

 — of the reports on the German South Polar Expedi- 

 tion, under Prof, von Drygalski, in the Gauss. Since 

 the issue of this important memoir, the news has 

 arrived of the great loss which science has sustained 

 by the death of its talented author. 



During the whole of the voyage out to the Antarctic 

 Ocean, frequent soundings were taken, directly the 

 equator was crossed. Thirty soundings are recorded 

 between the equator and the Cape of Good Hope, and 

 eighteen more between tTie Cape and the ice-limit. 

 In the same way, on the return voyage, eighteen 

 soundings were obtained during the somewhat cir- 

 NO. 2128, VOL. 84I 



cuitous course by way of the Heard, Kerguelen, St. 

 Paul, and New Amsterdam islands, and by the south 

 of Madagascar back to the Cape ; thence to the 

 equator, by a different course to the outward one, 

 thirty-nine further soundings were taken. The 

 methods of obtaining samples of the sea-bottom, in 

 the case of these soundings, and the subsequent treat- 

 ment of the materials in the laboratory, are fully 

 discussed in the memoir, and the careful descriptions 

 of the specimens of the globigerina and diatomaceous 

 oozes, and of the blue and red muds, are supple- 

 mented by mineralogical notes by Dr. R. Reinisch, 

 and chemical analyses by Dr. J. Gebbing. On the 

 chart, a graphic illustration is given of the nature of 

 the sea-bottom at each of the stations, and this 

 part of the work is of considerable value as adding 

 fresh materials for a description of the exact char- 

 acter of the floors of the South Atlantic and Indian 

 Oceans. The descriptions of the soundings and the 

 tabular statements concerning them are very com- 

 plete, and will prove of great value for purposes of 

 comparison. 



The portion of the memoir which will perhaps 

 excite the greatest interest, however, is that which 

 deals with the materials obtained in soundings along 

 the margin of the Antarctic pack-ice. The thirty- 

 three soundings in which specimens of the ocean 

 floor were obtained are valuable as giving indications 

 of the geological structure of that portion of the 

 Antarctic continent lying between the meridians of 

 80° and 96° E. The mineral fragments, which have 

 been very carefullv examined and described, must 

 have been brought down by glaciers from the interior 

 of the continent. Among the larger fragments occur 

 granitic rocks, gneisses, amphibolites, and other 

 crystalline schists, with a red quartzitic sandstone, 

 coarse or fine grained, and, more rarely, gabbro. 

 Of recent volcanic rocks, fragments of basalt and of 

 volcanic glass are recorded from a few stations only, 

 and it is suggested that possibly these may have come, 

 not from the continental lands, but from some island 

 or islands lying within the limits of the ice-pack, or 

 possibly they may be the products of submarine erup- 

 tions. 



The long list of minerals given from the different 

 snundinsrs confirms the conclusions drawn from the 

 studv of the rock-fragments, for they nearly all 

 belong to species characteristic of granitic rocks and 

 the older crystalline schists. The study of the sandy 

 or muddy materials in which these rock and mineral 

 fragments are embedded shows that, as a rule, they 

 are free from calcareous matter. Of the thirty-three 

 deposits examined, only one was found to contain any 

 considerable proportion of calcium carbonate, 

 nearlv 20 per cent. ; four others contained from i to 5 

 per cent., and four others mere traces; the remaining 

 twenty-four were perfectly free from all calcareous 

 matter. Although the glacial muds graduate, in pass- 

 ing northwards towards warmer seas, into the dia- 

 tomaceous ooze, the remains of the microscopic algje 

 are not abundant in the muds from the borders of the 

 pack-ice. Some foraminifera occur, and glauconite 

 was detected in five of the soundings. 



