COXFORMATIOX OF THE SURFACE. 133 



3. Wilkes Land, the Balleny Isles, and Victoria Land. 



Within the limits defined at the outset, the island of 

 South Georgia, the South Sandwich Islands, the Bouvet 

 Islands, and Dougherty Island are also to be found. Be- 

 yond the extreme belt of the pack-ice, on the other hand, 

 lie the Marion and Crozet Islands, Kerguelen and Heard 

 Island, as also Macquarie Island and Campbell Island ; 

 these latter, therefore, are not taken into account. 



If now the situation of the Antarctic groups of land 

 be compared with that of the continents lying partly or 

 entirely to the south of the equator, a striking fact is at 

 once perceived. The two most extensive masses of Ant- 

 arctic land hitherto discovered lie under almost the same 

 meridians as South America and Australia with New 

 Zealand, in both instances somewhat to the west, and 

 both approaching the opposite continent in peninsular 

 conformation. Moreover, just as South America projects 

 furthest south of all the continents, so the Dirk Gerritz 

 Archipelago and the South Shetland Islands extend 

 farthest north beyond the Antarctic circle, separated 

 from South America only by the comparatively narrow 

 Drake's Straits. In other respects, also, comparisons 

 might be drawn between the masses of land thus lying 

 opposite to each other, as shown in an exceedingly in- 

 teresting, though merely theoretical, work by Hans Reiter. 

 For instance, just as the coast of Wilkes Land appears 

 to be a duplicate of the Australian coast, not only in hori- 

 zontal outline, but also in vertical structure, so the 

 gigantic mountain range to which the coast of Victoria 

 Land rises seems to correspond to the mountain chain 

 of New Zealand ; while the volcanic southern extremity 

 of the Cordilleras of South America finds its counterpart 

 in the broken and scattered island masses, also bearing 

 active volcanoes, to the south of Drake's Straits. Whether 

 it is reasonable to assume that this external resemblance 

 corresponds to some internal structure, or is even based on 



