president’s address. 
1G5 
basin. That this is not an idle assumption is evidenced by the fact 
that South Greenland is now an area of depression. As the sea 
gained upon the land, the ice-cap would dissolve in the ocean, the 
border coast-lands which supported plant and animal life would 
eat their way .slowly inland. Again we must assume that the 
depression of the land rciiched its ma.ximura, still leaving the 
mountain tops as islands above the level of the sea, and upheaval 
commences. That the proce.ss of upheaval is now in progress in 
all circumpolar lands from which the ice-cap is removed is 
indisputably proved. In (Irinnell Land, in the islands of the 
Parry Archipelago, in Spitsbergen, where the land is rising with 
such rapidity, that wlicrc the Dutch and ICnglish whalers floated 
and flensed their prey, less than three hundred years ago, is now 
dry land. In 2s’^ovaya-Zemlya, it has been calculated that there 
has been a rising of the sea-bottom to the extent of one liundred feet 
in less than three hundred years, or at the rate of thirty-three feet 
in a century. 
The same process of upheaval is recorded by every observer in 
the Polar area. Granting that the rate of emergence is greater 
relatively than the superimposing capacity of glacial precipitation, 
the land would appear with its higher portions clad in snow and 
glacier-ice, whilst the freshly emerging land would again be re-clad 
Avith the old plant-life, and its animals Avould enjoy a more 
extended range, until again the process of upheaval closes, and the 
ice-cap once more reasserts the mastery. That a series of events 
such as 1 have endeavoured to describe is now in process in high 
Arctic latitudes Avas impressed on me during my stay in Grinnell 
Land. My OAvn observations tliere arc fully confirmed and enlarged 
by those subsequently made by Major Greely, LT.S.A., Avho thus 
describes the orographical features of Grinnell Land : — “ There 
exists from Kobeson and Kennedy Channels AvestAA'ard to Greely 
Fiord and the Polar Sea a series of fertile valleys, clothed with 
vegetation of luxuriant groAvth, Avhereon pasture large herds of 
Musk-Oxen. Over a hundred of these interesting animals were 
killed, and over Iavo hundred others Avere seen. The boundaries of 
