424 SCIENTIFIC ADVANTAGES OF AN ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION. 



I 



from the mountain ranges on which, the gathering ground lies; oris the 

 whole country one vast gathering ground from the continual excess of 

 precipitation over melting? These questions, and a hundred others, 

 have to be solved by Antarctic discovery, and until they are solved 

 we can not argue with security on the geological history of our own 

 now temperate regions. The Antarctic continent is unquestionably the 

 region of the earth in Avhich glacial conditions are at their maximum, 

 and therefore it is the region in which we must look for all the informa- 

 tion attainable toward, perhaps, the most difficult problem with which 

 geological science has to deal. 



SIR JOSEPH hooker's VIEWS. 



Dr. Murray's admirable summary of the scientific information obtain- 

 able by an organized exploration of the Antarctic regions, leaves nothing 

 further to be said under that head, I can only record the satisfaction 

 with which I heard it, and my earnest hope that it will lead to action 

 being taken b}^ the Government in the direction indicated. 



Next to a consideration of the number and complexity of the objects 

 to be obtained by an Antarctic expedition, what dwells most in my 

 imagination is the vast area of the unknown region which is to be the 

 field for investigation — a region which, in its full extension, reaches 

 from the latitude of 60° S. to the southern pole, and embraces every 

 degree of longitude. This is a very considerable portion of the surface 

 of the globe, and it is one that has been considered to be for the most 

 part inaccessible to man ; I will, therefore, ask you to accompany the 

 scientific explorer no farther than to the threshold of the scenes of his 

 labors, that you may see how soon and how urgently he is called upon 

 to study some of those hitherto unsolved Antarctic problems that he 

 will there encounter. 



In latitude 60° S. an oj^en ocean girdles the globe without break of 

 continuity. Proceeding southward in it, probably before reaching the 

 Antarctic circle, he encounters the floating ice fields, which form a cir- 

 cuui polar girdle known as "The Pack," approximately concentric with 

 the oceanic, interrupted in one meridian only, that south of Cape Horn, 

 by the northern prolongation of Grahams Land. Pursuing his south- 

 w*ard course in search of seas or lands beyond, after the novelty of his 

 position in the Pack has worn off, he asks where and how the compo- 

 nent parts of these great fields of ice had their origin, how they arrived 

 at and maintain their present position, what are their rate of progress 

 and courses, and what their influence on the surrounding atmosphere 

 and ocean. I believe I am right in thinking that to none of these ques- 

 tions can a fuller answer be given than that they originated over exten- 

 sive areas of open water in a higher latitude than they now occupy, that 

 they are formed of frozen ocean water and snow, and that winds and cur- 

 rents have brought them to where we now find them : but of the position 

 of the southern open waters, with the exception of the comparatively 



