Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 10.djvu/649

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Applications of Physical Forces. By Amédée Guillemin. Edited by J. N. Lockyer. New York: Macmillan. Pp. 770; with colored Plates and Illustrations. Price, $12.50.

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Antarctic Icebergs.—Sir C. Wyville Thomson, in a lecture reported in Nature for November 30th and December 7th, presents facts of interest obtained during the cruise of the Challenger, concerning the antarctic regions visited.

The expedition met with its first ice five days' sail southward of the desolate, rocky group known as the Heard Islands. In a short time the ship was in the midst of bergs of exquisite beauty of both form and color.

The most southerly point reached was latitude 66° 40' south, longitude 78° 22' east, when they were exactly 1,400 miles from the south pole. The icebergs, some of them of immense size, were tabular in form, "the surface being level, and parallel with the surface of the sea . . . a cliff, on an average 200 feet high, bounding the berg. The cliffs were marked with delicately pale blue lines a foot apart near the top, closer together near the bottom; the intervening bands were white, probably from containing some air. . . . The stratifications of the bergs being originally horizontal, they were believed to be blocks riven from the edge of the great antarctic ice-sheet."

A further conclusion was that the stratification was due to successive accumulations of snow upon a nearly level surface. There was no evidence that the ice had passed over uneven surfaces, nor was there upon the bergs any trace of débris, such as might fall from elevated cliffs. The snow 