SCIENTIFIC ADVANTAGES OF AN ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION. 425 



diminutive sea east of Victoria Laind,^ we know nothing, nor do we 

 know anything of the relative amount of snow and ice of which they 

 are composed, or of their age, or of the winds and currents that have 

 carried them to a lower latitude. 



The other great glacial feature of the Antarctic area is "The Barrier" 

 which Eoss traced for 300 miles in the seventy-eighth and seventy-ninth 

 degrees of south latitude, maintaining throughout its character of an 

 inaccessible precipitous ice cliff (the sea front of a gigantic glacier) of 

 150 to 200 feet in height. This stupendous glacier is no doubt one 

 parent of the huge table-topped ice islands that infest the higher lati- 

 tudes of the Southern Ocean ; but as in the case of the Pack, we do not 

 know where the Barrier has its origin, or anything further about it 

 than that it in great part rests upon a comparatively shallow ocean bot- 

 tom. It probably abuts uDon land, possibly on an Antarctic continent; 

 but to prove this was impossible, on the occasion of Boss's visit, for the 

 height of the ship's crow's-nest above the sea surface was not sufficient 

 to enable him to overlook even the upper surface of the ice. Nor do I 

 foresee any other method of settling this important point, except by the 

 use of a cajDtive balloon, an implement with which I hope that future 

 exi)editions may be supplied. There were several occasions in which 

 such an implement might advantageously have been used by Boss 

 when near the Barrier, and more when it would have greatly facilitated 

 his navigation of the Pack. 



I have chosen the Antarctic ice as the subject upon which to address 

 this most important meeting, not only because it is one of the very first 

 of the phenomena that demand the study of the explorer, but because 

 it is the dominant feature in Antarctic navigation, where the Pack is 

 ever present or close by, demanding, whether for being penetrated or 

 evaded, all the commander's fortitude and skill, and all his crew's 

 endurance. 



It may be expected that I should allude to those sections of Dr. Mur- 

 ray's summary that refer to the Antarctic fauna and flora; they are 

 most important, for the South Polar Ocean swarms with animal and 

 vegetable life. Large collections of these, taken both by the tow net 

 and by deep-sea soundings, were made by Sir J. Boss, who was an ardent 

 naturalist and threw away no opportunity of observing and preserving; 

 but unfortunately, with the exception of the Diatomacese (which were 

 investigated by Ehrenberg), very few of the results of his labor in this 

 direction have been published. A better fate, I trust, awaits the treas- 

 ures that the hoped-for expedition will bring back; for so prolific is 

 that ocean that the naturalist need never be idle, no, not even for one 

 of the twenty-four hours of daylight throughout an Antarctic summer, 



^I refer to the ''pancake "ice, which, in that sea, on sereral occasions formed with 



great rapidity around Ross's ship, in lat. 76° to 78° S. in February, 1842, and which 

 arrested their progress. Such ice, augmented by further freezing of the water and 

 by snowfalls, may be regarded as a genesis of fields that, when broken up by galea. 

 are carried to the north and contribute to the circumpolar pack. 



