Notices of Memoirs — Ice Age and Antarctic Research. 129 



III. — The Bearing of the Facts revealed by Antarctic Research 

 UPON the Problems of the Ice Age.' By Marsden Manson, 

 C.E., Ph.D., Mem. Ainer. Soc. C. E., San Francisco, California. 

 From Science, n.s., toI. xlvi, No. 1200, pp. 639-40. 



RECEjS'T Antarctic explorations and researches have yielded 

 significant evidence regarding the problems of the Ice Age, and 

 of the similarity of the succession of geological climates in polar 

 with those in other latitudes.^ 



These researches have been prosecuted to the ultimate limit of 

 courage, devotion to duty, and endurance — the noble sacrifice of life 

 — as in the cases of Captain Scott, il.Ns, and his devoted companions 

 and members of the expedition of Sir Ernest Shackleton. 



The data secured by these expeditions are alone sufficient to 

 establish the following premises : — 



1. That Antarctic ice, although covering areas several times larger 

 than all other ice-covered areas, is slowly decreasing in extent and 

 depth. 



2. That the same succession of geological climates have prevailed 

 in Antarctic as in other latitudes.^ 



So vital are these evidences of the retreat of Antarctic ice that it 

 may be well to briefly quote or refer to the most prominent instances : 

 " AH these evidences and many others which space will not allow 

 me to mention lead up to one great fact — namely, that the glaciation 

 of the Antarctic regions is receding.* The ice is everywhere 

 retreating.* The high level moraines decrease in height above the 

 present -surface of the ice, the debris being two thousand feet up 

 near the coast and only two hundred feet above near the plateau. 

 (Scott's lecture on the great ice barrier.")" 



This observation applies to an ice-covered area of over 116,000 

 square miles. 



Mr. Griffith Taylor notes the recession of Dry Valley Glacier 

 twenty miles from the sea below Taylor Glacier." 



Mr. Taylor also notes and speaks with confidence of the passage of 

 the Ice Age from Antarctica.* 



In speaking of the evidence of ice retreat over Antarctic areas 



^ This term as used by the writer refers to the Great Ice Age of Pleistocene 

 time. He holds that the occurrences of ice as a geologic agent of magnitude 

 during eras preceding the Pleistocene were not ' ' worldwide ' ' nor as 

 "phenomenal", nor were they preceded, accompanied, nor followed by 

 conditions as significant as corresponding phenomena of the Ice Age. Compte 

 Eendu du Xleme Congres Geologique International, Stockholm, 1910, 

 p. 1105. 



" Scott's Last Expedition, vol. ii, p. 206. 



' This part of the evidence is not considered in this paper except inferentially 

 as bearing upon the general subject. 



■* Scott, The Voyage of the "Discovery ", vol. ii, p. 416. See also pp. 423-5, 

 a.nd sketch-map of ice distribution, p. 448. 



'' Scott, National Antarctic Expedition, 1900-1904, vol. i, p. 94. 



^ Scott's Last Expedition, vol. ii, p. 294. 



•^ Ibid., p. 286. 



* Ibid., p. 288. See also photograph following pp. 286, 292. 



DECADE VI. — VOL. V. — NO. III. 9 



