Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists' Society. 423 



A properly equipped party of observers situated at a point like 

 this on the Antarctic Continent for one or two winters might carry 

 out a most valuable series of observations, make successful excursions 

 towards the interior, and bring back valuable information as to the 

 probable thickness of the ice-cap, its temperature at different levels, 

 its rate of accumulation, and its motion. As to the evidence of an 

 Antarctic Continent, the form and structure of the Antarctic icebergs 

 show that they were built up on and had flowed over an extensive 

 land surface. As they float north and break up in warmer latitudes 

 they distribute over the floor of the ocean large quantities of 

 glaciated rock-fragments and land detritus. 



These materials have been dredged up by the "Challenger" in 

 considerable quantities, and show the rocks of this land to be 

 gneisses, granites, mica-schists, quartz-diorites, sandstones, lime- 

 stones, and shales ; indicating continental land, and were clearly 

 transported from land at the South Pole. 



EocKS, — D'Urville describes rocky islets off Adelie Land composed 

 of granite and gneiss. Wilkes found on an iceberg, near the same 

 place, boulders of red sandstone and basalt. Borchgrevink and. Bull 

 fragments of mica-schists and other continental rocks from Cape 

 Adare. Dr. Donald brought back a piece of red jasper or chert 

 containing Eadiolaria and Sponge spicules from Joinville Island. 

 Captain Larsen brought from Seymour Island pieces of fossil 

 coniferous wood, and fossil shells of Cucullcea, Cythercea, Cyprina, 

 Teredo, and Natica, having a close resemblance to species of lower 

 Tertiary age in Patagonia, etc. These fossil remains indicate a 

 much warmer climate in these areas in times past. 



It is not to be expected that a living land-fauna will now be 

 discovered beyond the Penguin rookeries. Fossils will, however, 

 throw important light upon the age of the Antarctic land. 



As Tertiary, Mesozoic, and Palaeozoic fossils have been freely 

 met with in Arctic regions, we are justified in anticipating the 

 discovery of like forms on the Antarctic lands, with corresponding 

 former climatic changes, such as the presence of these forms of life 

 would demand.^ 



Keeguexen Islands, Lat. 49° 20' S., Long. 69° 24' E.— In 

 Sir James Clark Koss's voyage to the Antarctic (1847, 2 vols., 

 Murray), he visited the Island of Kerguelen in 1840, and records 

 the occurrence of a bed of coal, four feet thick and 40 feet in length 

 (exposed), near Arched Point, Christmas Harbour, 30 feet above the 

 sea, and covered by basalt. On the north side of the bay formed 

 by Cape Francois is a thin seam of coal (two or three inches in 

 thickness) covered by a kind of ' slag ' and by basalt. Silicified 

 trunks of trees are also met with, some of which (brought home by 

 Sir Joseph Hooker) are preserved in the British Museum. 



The coal is described as slaty, of a brownish-black colour, and the 

 fracture is like wood-coal. Both the wood and the coal-seam are 

 probably of Tertiary age. (A trunk of a large tree, seven feet in 



1 See Sir John Murray, Proc. Eoy. Soc, vol. Ixii (1898), pp. 424-451. 



