INTRODUCTION 



BY THE EDITOR 



Although the general arrangement of land and water 

 at the surface of the earth, as shown in ordinary maps, 

 is familiar to every schoolboy, yet nowadays, when the 

 use of the globe as an instrument for teaching is some- 

 what out of fashion, not only the importance, but even 

 the very shape of the water is apt to be overlooked — a 

 neglect fostered by atlases which, as a rule, are con- 

 cerned merely with the land. Yet the surface of the 

 earth shows about two and a half times as much water 

 as land. Again, the ordinary atlas fails to show that 

 the land is massed towards the North Pole, the water 

 towards the South. It is possible to draw a " great 

 circle," the hemisphere north of which (Fig. 3) shows 

 land and water in about equal proportions (47 : 52), 

 but in its southern hemisphere (Fig. 2) nine-tenths of 

 the surface is under water. Still less do ordinary maps 

 display the connection between the great oceans ; 

 their South passes into a blank Unknown. It is not 

 easy to get a proper grasp of this connection except 

 from a globe ; but several of the star projections (Fig. 4) 

 show fairly well that the three great oceans — Pacific, 

 Atlantic, and Indian — can be regarded as bays of that 

 single Southern Ocean which forms a not very wide belt 

 round the Antarctic Continent, narrowed to about 

 540 sea miles between the latter and the Horn. 



These three great bays have certain features in 

 common : in the Pacific, owing to the scattered islands, 



ix 



