154 
president's address. 
(2) Granite and various ancient crystalline rocks have been 
proved to occur in situ at the South Shetlands and 
Trinity Land, and granite and gneiss occur in situ, 
forming nine small islands off Terre Adelie, as observed 
by the French corvettes V Astrolabe and La Zelee* 
Drift fragments of granite, dioritic rocks, quartzites, 
clay shales, &c, were dredged by the Challenger not 
far from the supposed Termination Land of Wilkes. 
Ross dredged a large piece of coarse granite off Victoria 
Land, and Dr. McCormick, the surgeon of the Erebus, 
frequently found fragments of granite in the crops of the 
penguins. His researches constantly proved that the 
penguins were invaluable as collectors of geological 
specimens. Granite is almost always characteristic of 
continents or of islands bordering continents, but is 
usually absent from oceanic islands. 
(3) Glauconite in the blue muds near the Antarctic barrier 
is probably indicative of the proximity of a continent. 
(4) Commenting on the fact that the observations during the 
Challenger expedition showed that 162 new species out 
of 398 identified are peculiar to Antarctic regions, Dr. 
Murray states ( op. cit. p. 22), "It is most probable, indeed 
almost certain, that the floor of the ocean, as well as all 
pelagic waters, have been peopled from the shallow waters 
surrounding continental land, and here in the deep 
waters of the Antarctic we appear to have very clear 
indications of the existence of the descendants of animals 
that once inhabited the shallow water along the shores 
of Antarctica, while in the other regions of the ocean 
the descendants of the shallow water organisms of the 
northern continents prevail." 
* Voyage au Pole Sud et dans 1' Oc^anie. Sur les Corvettes L' Astrolabe 
et La Zelee, execute pendant les Annees 1S37-40. Geologie, Mineralogie, 
et Geographie physique du Voyage, Vols, xxii.-xxiii. Paris, 1848. 
