VICTORIA LAND. 207 



no means includes the proof, it is nevertheless true 

 that Reiter's conception is worthy of notice, and that it 

 it seems to come near the actual facts. A portion of 

 detritus brought home by Borchgrevingk from Cape 

 Adare proves that the region of Victoria Land has been 

 subject to powerful structural revolutions in its geological 

 past. This specimen, a fragment of granite, showed under 

 the microscope that i'ts crystalline components had been 

 completely pulverised and subsequently cemented by 

 silicious matter, a condition which can be observed in 

 all the heavily compressed crystalline minerals of contorted 

 ranges. It is not to be denied that much may be urged 

 against this view. In the first place, the soundings 

 made of the sea bottom in Ross Sea in no wise bear 

 out the widely accepted coincidence supposed to exist 

 between the greatest depths and the most striking 

 structural features of the contorted coast. So far as is 

 known no really great depth has been found to exist in 

 Ross Sea ; the deepest sounding taken by Ross, 2,700 

 feet without touching the bottom, was in latitude 74° 40' 

 S. and longitude 166° W., far distant from any known 

 land ; in the neighbourhood of land on the contrary the 

 soundings gave much lower, and at the same time 

 extremely variable, measurements. Thus the depth about 

 six miles from Cape Adare was found to be 991 feet, 

 while 135 miles east of Cape Phillips the depth was only 

 1,082 feet, descending towards the coast to 1,260 feet, 

 no great depth when compared with those off the 

 Cordillera range, Japan, the curve of the Sunda Isles, 

 and other portions of the great contorted system. The 

 greatest depth actually measured descends no farther 

 than 2,450 feet, and this sounding was taken near the 

 edge of the great ice barrier about 105 miles east of 

 Mount Erebus, while the greatest depth measured nearer 

 land was 2,150 feet, between Franklin Island and 

 MacMurdo Bay. Of course it might be urged that the 



