276 GEOGRAPHIC LITERATURE 



always charging himself with their safety and comfort; he concentrates 

 in his own person the energy and ambition and nearly all the individuality 

 of the party, and inevitably dwarfs, in some measure, the abilities of the 

 others ; he alone, or nearly so, responds to the signal " Bear " sounded by 

 dog or man, and leads the van on all occasions ; and when ponies and dogs 

 are broken down, it is he who takes the harness as leader of the team. 

 Throughout it all he glories in his "tub ; " even when but a gill of water 

 can be painfully obtained by snow-melting, and when the blizzard howls 

 far below zero, he creeps out on hummock or glacier to gloat over a 

 sponge bath to the waist ! And his philosophy is as characteristic as his 

 language when, on summarizing the nasty boat trip, he says, " We have 

 had an exceedingly near squeak for it, and it was very nearly ta-ta on 

 many occasions " (p. 299). Though monarch of his domain, he is always 

 Briton and mindful of Britain's Queen ; and one of his mainsprings is the 

 desire to extend Her Majesty's dominion even unto the futile shadow of 

 the poles, and he rejoices in the opportunity to replace the imaginary 

 portion of "Franz Josef Land" by a far-stretching "Queen Victoria 

 sea." The geographic results of Jackson's work are notably 



valuable; he surveyed a large part of the little-known Franz Josef 

 Land, showing it to be an inconsiderable archipelago rather than a great 

 land mass extending to the Pole ; he shows " Gillis Land " to be non-ex- 

 istent; and he gives an admirable record of the natural history and me- 

 teorology of a little- known portion of the globe. The "land" consists of 

 a congeries of basaltic mesas rising a few hundred feet above sea, with 

 the intervening valleys submerged ; and nearly all the surface is mantled 

 with perpetual snow, forming extensive neve-fields and glaciers whence 

 bergs are constantly fed to the surrounding ocean. A pparently the region 

 is one of peculiarly unstable climate; gales keep water and ice astir, so 

 that the effect of summer is hastened despite the irregularity of the sea- 

 sons, and this doubtless accounts for the incomplete glacial covering and 

 hence for the considerable fauna, especially of bear and walrus and seal — 

 which was, however, greatly reduced by Jackson's hunting. The 



bulk of the book is well illustrated itinerary ; but 140 pages are devoted 

 to appendices on the natural history of the region, and there is an impor- 

 tant chapter on scurvy, containing the results not only of Arctic experi- 

 ence, but of experiments on monkeys in England. The publishers have 

 done their work admirably ; so that, on the whole, the book is one of 

 the most instructive and attractive products of Arctic work thus far issued. 



AV J M. 



Shoreline Topography. By F. P. Gulliver. (Proceedings of the American 



Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. xxxiv, No. 8, January, 1899.) 



Pp. 151-258. 



As an able representative of the school of modern geographers fostered 



especially by the U. S. Geological Survey and Harvard University, Dr 



Gulliver is already favorably known; and this little monograph will add 



materially to his prestige and to the beneficial influence of his school. 



Throughout he employs and applies the genetic method, dealing with the 



shore features as products of recognized agency ; dynamic agencies are 



indeed conceived to be conditioned by static factors of volume, structure, 



