Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 60.djvu/221

Rh records by reaching the latitude of 78°. On his own lines Ross's work was magnificent. His magnetic survey has not been equalled in the Antarctic; his southern record was not passed until 1900; his discovery of Victoria Land and Mounts Erebus and Terror were geographical results of high importance. But Ross's range of interest was narrow; he did not land on the main land he discovered, and would not let his doctor, McCormick; he advanced erroneous theories of oceanic circulation, assigned wrong temperatures to the sea water, owing to misunderstanding his thermometers; he told us practically nothing of the geology of the Antarctic lands, for the few pebbles he brought back were neglected until they were recently unearthed and described by Mr. Prior.

After the voyage of Ross there was a long interval before-serious work in the Antarctic was renewed. Sealers and whalers made minor geographical discoveries, and the voyage of the 'Challenger' in 1874 showed that the Antarctic sea is full of scientific interest. But it was not until 1885 and 1886 that the papers of Professor G. Neumayer, now of Hamburg, and formerly director of the Flagstaff Observatory at Melbourne, and of Sir John Murray roused fresh interest in Antarctic research. Since then the voyages of some Dundee and Norwegian sealers, of the 'Antarctic' and 'Southern Cross' in Victoria Land and the Ross Sea, and of the 'Belgica' to the south of the Atlantic have made important additions to our Antarctic knowledge.

Now, in the year 1901, four expeditions are starting for the Antarctic: an English expedition under Commander R. F. Scott, E. N., in the 'Discovery,' with Mr. G. E. Murray, F.R.S., as head of the civilian scientific staff; a German expedition under Professor E. von Drygalski in the 'Gauss'; a Swedish expedition under Dr. Otto Nordenskjöld in the 'Antarctic' and a Scotch expedition under Mr. W. S. Bruce.

The four expeditions will work as far as possible on a common plan, but in different areas. The 'Discovery' will start from New Zealand and go thence into the Ross Sea, which will be its central field of work. The German expedition will go south from Kerguelen to the western end of Wilkes Land, geographically the least known part of the Antarctic; its route will depend on the geography of the area, but the idea is to work southwestward toward the Weddell Sea, south of the Atlantic. The Swedish and Scotch expeditions both go to the South Atlantic.

The work of these expeditions will depend primarily on the geographical character of their fields of operation. The Antarctic area includes three main geographical divisions, (1) Wilkes and Victoria