E.—GEOGRAPHY 87 
closely hidden, there are obviously to be found keys to some of the major 
problems of earth structure. We may instance only one which, no doubt, 
is occupying the attention of the geologists of the British Graham Land 
Expedition at the present moment, an expedition which hopes to press 
far to the south of the Archipelago where they are wintering, and to deter- 
mine why and where the folded ranges of South America and Graham 
Land merge into or butt against the faulted escarpments of the Australian 
sector of the Antarctic. 
It is in these larger problems of geology that the polar geologist can 
give most assistance to science. It is not long since the papers, in America 
at all events, were full of the discovery of coal beds by Admiral Byrd’s 
geologist within 300 miles of the South Pole, and it was interesting to see 
that this discovery, which however was originally made by the Shackleton 
party in 1908, moved the press public to exclamations of wonder that 
such things could be. Nevertheless the great controversies of whether 
the Poles have shifted in the past, and whether the continents are drifting, 
must draw their best evidence, both for and against, near the axis of the 
earth. 
There has recently been published a fresh determination of the position 
of Sabine Island on the coast of north-east Greenland which tends to 
show that there is a definite westerly drift of some metres per year. 
Similar observations of Jan Mayen are even more startling. For these 
and other reasons, therefore, the geo-physicist, whom we may call the 
_ mathematical cousin of the geologist, must keep his attention on the 
polar lands. 
In the biological sciences also there are major problems to which the 
data of high latitudes alone can give the key, such as the drift of oceanic 
waters and the movements of plankton and their associated salts. ‘The 
biologists, however, are already active in these investigations and need 
no spur to action. The many-sided character of the work of the Dis- 
covery Committee in this branch, over all the waters of the Antarctic 
ocean, is evidence of how carefully work on this aspect of the polar regions 
is being carried out. 
Lastly, I would ask your permission to consider yet another aspect 
of the polar regions, one which is perhaps more psychological than 
geographical, namely, their value as an outlet to that spirit of adventure 
and urge for exploration which has always been an attribute of man, and 
which will not diminish however small the world may grow. It is a spirit 
which is at work equally in the small child climbing the apple tree, the 
schoolboy exploring his own small horizon, the undergraduate forming 
alpine clubs to scale the peaks of his own college, and the city clerk 
pending his week-ends living dangerously in sailing dinghy or on motor 
icycle. 
In all of these there is a curious combination of an urge to test one’s 
abilities and yet a desire for a secondary and more useful object in the 
deed itself, and this dual purpose is particularly evident in most of the 
young men who come to the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge 
seeking ways in which to visit the Arctic. 
Looking over the files of the geographical journals of the past few years, 
