392 
PACIFIC EXPLORATION: W. M. DAVIS 
of similar oversights in other subjects, and one must thereupon experi- 
ence a great wish to see thorough and comprehensive work instituted 
in all subjects with the least possible delay. 
For example, following the beHef of the eminent Austrian geologist, 
Suess, regarding changes of ocean level, two responsible students of 
coral reefs, who must certainly have been regarded as competent in- 
vestigators by the institutions that sent them forth on their travels, 
have independently announced that certain high-standing atolls owe 
their altitude to a subsidence of the ocean — the entire ocean — while 
these atolls, little specks in the vast ocean, stood fixed: yet it may be 
easily shown that that explanation is preposterously inadequate to 
account for the total facts. Hence, if inadequate treatment has been 
given to so fundamental a problem as this, is it too much to say that 
the more recondite problems of the Pacific cannot be solved by the 
methods heretofore in use? Even subjects of so large dimensions as the 
circulation of the atmosphere over the Pacific and of the Pacific waters in 
their basin are known to us only in the most general way; Hke many 
other subjects, our knowledge of them comes from records made by ob- 
servers little trained in special fields. It cannot be doubted that large 
rewards will follow from exploration systematically carried on by trained 
specialists. 
Adventurous voyages of discovery sufficed in the eighteenth century, 
when the method of exploration may be described as discontinuous and 
local. Less adventurous and more scientific voyages of investigation 
in the nineteenth century made brave attack on many problems by a 
method that may be described as continuous and Knear. Now, so 
exacting have the demands of science become that nothing less than an 
areal survey of the Pacific will satisfy them; that is, a survey in which 
all the islands shall be included, and in which the successive routes of 
linear observation on the ocean shall be so closely interwoven that, like 
the work of the magnetic survey of the Pacific by the Carnegie Institution 
of Washington, the results gained may be reasonably regarded as appli- 
cable to the intermediate spaces. 
The exploration of the Pacific should not only be continuous in the 
areal sense, but continued in the time sense. Many problems will 
call for 'one voyage to learn,' however careful the preparation before 
setting out. Exploration should therefore be continued through a number 
of years under one administration, so that the voyaging staff may gain 
in the early voyages the expertness needed for the solution of their 
difficult tasks in the later voyages. Many returns must be made to 
critical points, where first observations regarding air, water, land, or Kfe 
