POSSIBLE LINES OF RESEARCH FOR FUTURE EXPEDITIONS U5 



4. Serial temperatures at various depths in the ice of the Barrier might be 

 obtained either from bores or crevasses. 



5. Serial temperatures all along the Barrier edge are v^ery much needed. 



G. Rate of melting of ice blocks at various depths in Boss Sea along the Barrier 

 edge, as might be ascertained by the method already suggested, which could be 

 employed at sheltered inlets like Bay of Whales or Western Inlet. 



7. Direction of currents under the Ross Barrier (a) at McMurdo Sound, (h) under 

 the main face of the Barrier. This could be ascertained with a deep sea current 

 meter at Bay of Whales, Western Inlet, and the shallow bight where the Barrier 

 is only 15 feet {i^ metres) high at a point 250 miles E.S.E. of Cape Crozier. 



8. The rate of movement, if any, of the Ross Barrier along its eastern margin 

 between Carmen Land and King Edward VII. Land, as well as many more observa- 

 tions of the movements along the western side of the Ross Barrier, are also much 

 needed. 



9. The granulation and crystallinity in general of the material of the Ross 

 Barrier at various depths has at present been very little studied.* 



10. The relation of ablation (loss) to precipitation (gain), whether the latter 

 results from falling snow, di'ifting snow, or contributing glaciers, f 



No observer interested in the phenomena of the glaciation of Europe during the 

 Pleistocene Ice Age can fail to be struck with the very important analogue of the 

 great Ross Piedmont to the vast sheet which formerly stretched from Scandinavia 

 to the northern part of Great Britain, filling in the North Sea. Just as in the case 

 of the smaller Antarctic Piedmont of the Drygalski-Reeves area, and the far larger 

 Ross Piedmont, one can imagine that, like the Ross Barrier, the old North Sea 

 Barrier was during the ice maximum everywhere aground except where it floated 

 over the depths of the Skiiger Rak. One sees the great glaciers of the Christiania 

 region, as well perhajDS as those of Christiansand, Stavanger, and Hardanger, 

 sending out far-reaching ice jetties or fanned-out ^liedmonts towards Great Britain. 

 These ice jetties, at first sej^arated from one another by open lanes of sea water, 

 eventually coalesce, either through then" edges coming in contact, or more prob- 

 ably through being linked up to one another by wide strips of old bay ice, 

 the sea ice in such sheltered lanes between the ice jetties not breaking away 

 during the summer, as sea ice does in more exposed areas, but gaining in 

 thickness from year to year. Its thickness meanwhile would be further increased 

 by accumulations of drift snow and falling snow. This probably was the manner 

 of the buHding of the great ice raft, or rather ice sledge, which drove eventually 



* C. S. Wright, Physicist to Captain Scott's recent expedition, has, we understand, an important 

 series of observations on this subject. 



t Mr. Wright concludes (" Scott's Last Expedition," vol. ii. p. 449) that the Koss Barrier Edge has 

 neither receded nor advanced between 1904 and 1912. We may remark that it is nevertheless possible 

 it has become thinned through submarine melting. 



