Ee eee Sele he ee SIESAT FAE ae E 
1878. | Geography and Travels. 701 
ing year, and from those of Dr. Hayes in 1861 and Capt. Nares 
in 1875-6, it is evident that the Polar basin is neither open sea 
nor continuous ice, but a fatal compromise between the two; and 
there seems now to be only two plans, one nearly as hopeless as 
the other, to choose between in any future attempt—either to 
establish permanent stations, as proposed by Lieut. Weyprecht and 
already initiated at one point by Capt. Tyson and Capt. Howgate, 
and to seize the opportunity of running north in early autumn from 
the station where the sea appears most open, or to run as far north 
as possible, at enormous expense, with a great force of men, and 
abundance of hpr and paraffine oil, and push northwards 
during the Arctic winter by a chain of communicating stations, 
with ice-built refuge huts. 
But little progress has been made during the past quarter 
of a century in the actual investigation of the conditions of 
the ee regions. From information derived from all 
sources up to the present, it may be gathered that the un- 
South Pole is by no means a continuous continent, but con- 
sists much more probably partly of comparatively low continental 
land, and partly of a series of continental islands bridged between 
and combined and covered to a depth of about 1,400 feet bya 
continuous ice cap. Several considerations appeared to him to 
be in favor of the view that the area round the South Pole is 
broken up and not continuous land. We have not only the pre- 
sumed effect of the transfer of warmer water to the southwards, 
but in the pea ase they had been able to detect 5 presence by 
the thermometer in high southern latitudes. It seems that all the 
icebergs are oneal tabular, the surface being perfectly level 
and parallel with the surface of the sea, a cliff of about 230 feet 
high bounding the berg. It seems probable that under the enor- 
mous pressure to which the ice is subjected a constant system of 
melting is going on, the water passing down by gravitation from 
layer to layer until it reaches the floor of the ice sheet, and finally 
` working out caanoe for itself between the ice and land. e 
could scarcely regret that it was utterly impossible for him on 
this occasion to enter nie details with regard to the relations of 
the abyssal fauna. He must admit that the relations of the | 
abyssal fauna to the fauna of the older tertiary and newer meso- 
zoic periods, though much closer than those of the fauna of shal- 
low water, were not so close as he had expected them to be; but — 
he felt that until the zodlogical results of several later voyages, 
and especially those of the Challenger, should have: been fully 
worked out, it would be premature to commit himself to any 
generalizations. Within the last decade the advance of know- 
