82 Transactions.—Miscellaneous. 
subsequent discoveries revived the idea in a modified form, and it is so 
long since anything was done towards exploring the antarctic regions, that 
a hazy notion that a mass of land surrounds the South Pole seems again to 
be diffusing itself, and we frequently find “the antarctic continent" spoken 
of as though it were an ascertained fact, whereas its existence is a mere 
hypothesis, although not a groundless one. What has really been dis- 
covered are three large tracts of land, many islands, and two or three 
pieces of land which may either be islands or the outlying points of a 
continent. The longest and best known of the three large tracts just 
mentioned is that lying to the south of Cape Horn, its various parts being 
named respectively Louis Philippe Land, Palmer Land, Graham Land, 
and Alexander Island. It is fringed with islands, of which the South 
Shetlands and the New Orkneys are the principal groups. In the same 
hemisphere, but due south of port Dunedin, lies Victoria Land, discovered 
by Sir James Ross in 1841, the coast line of which was further explored by 
him in the following year. This land is remarkable for being the site of an 
active volcano, 12,367 feet high, named by Ross Mount Erebus. It is 
situated in the high latitude of 76° 6’ S., and is in the vicinity of an 
extinct volcano, called by Ross Mount Terror. Ross traced Victoria Land 
from the 70th degree of latitude to nearly the 79th, the precise latitude 
attained by his ships being 78° 10’ S., or nearly four degrees higher than 
any navigator had reached before. It would appear that Victoria Land, to 
the south of New Zealand, forms a sort of bight; but what checked Ross's 
progress, and prevented him ascertaining the precise contour of the land at 
this latitude, was a solid barrier of ice, without flaw or fissure in its face, from 
100 to 300 feet high, trending to the north and east. He sailed along this 
barrier for 450 miles, without being able to find an entrance or to see any 
land rising behind it during a great part of the distance, so that, although 
Ross himself seems to have been of opinion that the barrier sereened a body 
of land, it cannot be positively asserted that such is the case. Victoria 
Land, may either at the point where Ross met the barrier, trend to the 
South Pole, or it may, covered by the ice barrier, stretch away to the east- 
ward to meet Alexander Land, between which and Victoria Land the only 
known Land is Peter 1st Island, on the 91st meridian of west longitude, 
discovered by the Russian navigator, Bellingshausen, in 1821. 
Turning now to the westward and south of Australia, we come to the 
important discoveries of our countryman Ballemy, the Frenchman D'Urville, 
and the American Wilkes. These consist of the Ballemy Isles, Sabrina 
Land, and Adélie Land. The two latter form a coast line, if we are to 
credit Wilkes, extending from 154? 27' E., to 97? 80' E. long.; but Wilkes's 
