2 THE ANTARCTIC. 



circle ; yet it would not occur to any one to regard the 

 southern section of Greenland outside the polar circle — 

 scarcely, if at all, differing in its natural conditions from 

 the northern section — as other than polar country. It is 

 impossible therefore to assign limits to polar regions by 

 a mere mathematical line, and they must be taken to 

 include all regions having, in the first and foremost 

 place, an essentially polar climate. But even so, the 

 difficulty of determining the limits of the Antarctic region 

 does not entirely disappear. A glance at the map be- 

 tween 50° and 6o° S. latitude shows a number of 

 islands, far distant from larger masses of land, such as 

 South Georgia, the South Sandwich Islands, and the 

 Bouvet Islands in the South Atlantic Ocean, the Marion 

 Islands, the Crozet Islands, Kerguelen and Heard Island 

 in the Southern Indian Ocean. All these islands lie to 

 the south of a line within which the mean temperature 

 •of the warmest month scarcely reaches the point which 

 has been accepted as the determining limit of the polar 

 climate, viz., 50° F. Moreover, this circle would include 

 not only the Falkland Isles, not far distant from the 

 coast of South America, but even a portion of the west 

 coast of South America itself, and we should thus have 

 to deal with too extensive a region under the heading of 

 the Antarctic. Another and better definition and limit is 

 readily found in the distribtition of ice. 



Upon all, or nearly all, maps representing the southern 

 hemisphere the name " Antarctic Ocean " is entered all 

 round the South Pole, although there is actually nowhere 

 any land or even submarine elevation to justify such a 

 limitation. On the contrary, the three great oceans of 

 the earth, the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Indian Ocean, 

 completely merge into one another south of a line drawn 

 from the Cape of Good Hope to the south coast of 

 Australia, and only the narrow South American continent 

 comes as an incomplete barrier between the Atlantic and 



