E.—_GEOGRAPHY 83 
sun, either indirectly in the form of coal and oil, or directly in the form of 
water power, in which the sun by evaporation has raised water to a height 
from which gravity, suitably used, returns power to us. Now, although 
water is one of the things of which there is a great scarcity in the polar 
regions, and the movement of ice masses can hardly be handled by 
engineers, yet meteorological processes are doing the same thing for air, 
raising masses of air in one area which sink down in another, and so pro- 
vide a source of power less tangible but just as real as that of water in 
a highland lake. The persistence, the strength and the frequency of 
the Antarctic blizzards compels anyone who has experienced them to 
feel that here is a vast source of power as yet untapped. May we be 
permitted to forecast that some day the miseries of the storm-bound 
parties of Mawson’s expedition, when for a whole year the wind averaged 
gale force, may be atoned for by our descendants making use of this power 
when coal is scarce and oil exhausted, while all the water power in the 
temperate regions is fully harnessed ? 
It would be unwise and inappropriate to burden a presidential address 
with statistics of wind in the Antarctic, but I do invite you to compare in 
your mind the power in the well-known falls of Niagara, about 6,000 tons 
of water falling per second, with the power in the little known Adélie 
Land, where an air river of at least 50 miles in width and probably some 
hundreds of feet in depth is moving outwards from the plateau at an 
average velocity of 50 miles per hour or about 70 ft. per second for most 
of the year. 
I will not further anticipate some H. G. Wells of the future who will 
ring the Antarctic with windmills producing power to be sent by wireless 
to the southern hemisphere, but merely assure my audience that the winds 
of the Antarctic have to be felt to be believed, and that nothing is quite 
impossible to physicists and engineers. 
We will not refer in detail here to the well-known efforts of the Cana- 
dians in particular, guided by the enthusiasm of Mr. Stefansson, towards 
increasing the pastoral value of the Canadian Arctic by the introduction 
and preservation of reindeer and other animals. This must go on; 
but in spite of Mr. Stefansson’s arguments one is forced to believe that 
if we limit these efforts to the truly Arctic lands the net effect on the world 
production of meat will be slight. 
We pass now from the economic aspect of our subject to some others 
which have less appeal to the man in the street, but which must never be 
omitted in any consideration of a region by a geographer. 
If we ask ourselves why so many people have gone to the polar regions 
in the past for other than economic reasons, the answer is perfectly 
plain. ‘To say they have gone because they wanted to is too bald a way of 
putting the answer. ‘Their motive in going is because the polar regions 
have offered them something which they cannot get elsewhere. One of 
these things is solitude and relief from the company of too many of their 
fellow men. One must be careful in dealing with such an abstract part 
of the subject to define that love of solitude or, as the journalist would 
call it, ‘ the lure of the wide open spaces.’ To begin with, it affects only 
a very small proportion of men and, I venture to suggest, very few women. 
