THE 



AMERICAN JOURNALOFSCIENCE 



[FOURTH SERIES.] 



Art. XXXIV. — On the Physiographic Improbability of Land 

 at the North Pole; by J. W. Spencer, A.M., Ph.D. 



The earlier explorers had little to guide them, but they 

 brought back occasional soundings, which seemed to indicate 

 a shallow Arctic basin. The drift wood suggested that it was 

 a more or less open sea, beneath the ice noes, even though its 

 depth might not be great. Some soundings were of unusual 

 depth, bnt their importance, not being known, was entirely 

 overlooked. The soundings in the Arctic region were insuffi- 

 cient of themselves to suggest their own explanation, before 

 the character of drowned channels was understood. Indeed, 

 while occasional valleys channeling the submerged border of 

 the continent had been noted by -Dana, Lindenkohl, Milne- 

 Edwards, Davidson, Issel, the present writer, Upham, and others, 

 the systematic study of these features really dates back only 

 to 1893-4, resulting in the publication of the "Reconstruc- 

 tion of the Antillean Continent."* This has been the pioneer 

 of many subsequent contributions on submarine valleys and 

 drowned plains. The same features have been studied on the 

 western side of Europe by Prof. Edward Hull,f and in the 

 Arctic region and farther south by Prof. F. Nansen4 Accord- 

 ingly the features of submarine valleys channeling the edge 

 of the Continental mass are now pretty well understood, so 

 that we can interpret even the limited amount of data already 

 obtained in the Arctic region and have some reasonable under- 

 standing of the phenomena which they indicate. 



I was in northern Norway when the Ziegler expedition 

 sailed, and hearing of their expectation of finding Polar land, 



* By the present writer, Bull. Geol. Soc. Am. , vol. vi, pp. 103-140, 1894. 



f Numerous papers, mostly published in Trans. Victoria Institute, London, 

 1898-1902. 



% On Bathymetrical features, Continental Shelves and Oscillations, Chris- 

 tiania, 1904, pp. 232, plates 28. 



Am. Jour. Sci.— Fourth Series, Yol. XIX, No. 113— Mat, 1905. 

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