396 THE FUNCTION AND FIELD OF GEOGRAPHY. 



surface of the globe. For the last three or four years the Royal Geo- 

 graphical Society, backed by other British societies, have been attempt- 

 ing to move the Home Government to equip an adequate expedition to 

 comjDlete the woi-k begun by E-oss sixty years ago and to supplement 

 the great work of the Challenger. But though sympathy has been 

 expressed for Antarctic exploration, and though vague promises have 

 been given of support, the Government is afraid to enter upon an enter- 

 prise which might involve the services of a few naval officers and men. 

 We need not criticise this attitude. But the Royal Geographical Soci- 

 ety has determined not to let the matter rest here. It is now seeking 

 to obtain the support of public- spirited men for an Antarctic expedition 

 under its own auspices. It is felt that Antarctic exploration is pecul- 

 iarly the work of England, and that if an expedition is undertaken it 

 will receive substantial support from the great Australasian colonies, 

 which have so much to gain from a kuowledge of the physical condition 

 of a region lying at their own doors, and probably having a serious 

 influence on their climatological conditions. Here, then, is one of the 

 greatest geographical problems of the future, the solution of which 

 should be entered upon without further delay. It may be mentioned 

 that a small and well-equipped Belgian expedition has already started, 

 mainly to carry out deep-sea research around the South Polar area, and 

 that strenuous eiforts are being made in Germany to obtain the funds 

 for an expedition on a much larger scale. 



But our science has to deal not only with the lands of the globe; its 

 sphere is the whole of the surface of the earth, and all that is thereon, 

 so far at least as distribution is concerned. The department of ocean- 

 ography is a comparatively new creation; indeed, it may be said to 

 have come definitely into being with the famous voyage of the Challenger. 

 There had been expeditions for ocean investigation before that, but on 

 a very limited scale. It has only been through the results obtained by 

 the Challenger^ supplemented by those of expeditions that have exam- 

 ined more limited areas, that we have been able to obtain an approxi- 

 mate conception of the conditions which prevail throughout the various 

 ocean depths — conditions of movement, of temperature, of salinity, of 

 life. We have only a general idea of the contours of the ocean bed and 

 of the composition of the sediment which covers that bed. The extent 

 of the kuowledge thus acquired may be gauged from the fact that it 

 occupies a considerable space in the fifty quarto volumes — the Challenger 

 publications — which it took Dr. John Murray twenty years to bring 

 out. But that great undertaking has only, as it were, laid down the 

 general features of the oceanic world. There is plenty of room for fur- 

 ther research in this direction. Our own surveying ships, which are 

 constantly at work all over the world, do a certain amount of oceanic 

 work, apart from mere surveying of coasts and islands and shoals. In 

 1895 one of these found in the South Pacific soundings deeper by 500 

 fathoms than the deepest on record, that found twenty years earlier by 



