The South Pole Part 33

N.W.

7 12 51 10 4 10 2 4

Here again, E. is predominant, as half the high winds come from this quarter. W. and N.W. together have only 6 per cent.

The total number of high winds is 51, or 5.6 per cent. of the total of wind observations.

The most frequent directions of storms are also E. and N.E.

The Aurora Australis.

During the winter months auroral displays were frequently seen -- altogether on sixty-five days in six months, or an average of every third day -- but for want of apparatus no exhaustive observations could be attempted. The records are confined to brief notes of the position of the aurora at the times of the three daily observations.

The frequency of the different directions, reckoned in percentages of the total number of directions given, as for the wind, will be found in the following table:

N.

N.E.

E.

S.E.

S.

S.W.

W.

N.W.

Zenith.

18 17 16 9 8 3 8 13 8

N. and N.E. are the most frequent, and together make up one-third of all the directions recorded; but the nearest points on either side of this maximum -- E. and N.W. -- are also very frequent, so that these four points together -- N.W., N., N.E., E. -- have 64 per cent. of the whole. The rarest direction is S.W., with only 3 per cent. (From the position of the Magnetic Pole in relation to Framheim, one would rather have expected E. to be the most frequent, and W. the rarest, direction.) Probably the material before us is somewhat scanty for establishing these directions.

Meteorological Record from Framheim.

April, 1911 -- January, 1912.

Height above sea-level, 36 feet. Gravity correction, .072 inch at 29.89 inches. Lat.i.tude, 78 38' S. Longitude, 163 37' W.

Explanation of Signs in the Tables.

SNOW signifies snow.

MIST ,, mist.

AURORA ,, aurora.

RINGSUN ,, large ring round the sun.

RINGMOON ,, ,, ,, moon.

STORM ,, storm

sq. ,, squalls

a. ,, a.m.

p. ,, p.m.

I., II, III., signify respectively 8 a.m., 2 p.m., and 8 p.m.

(e.g., SNOW) signifies slight.

2 (e.g., SNOW2) ,, heavy.

Times of day are always in local time.

The date was not changed on crossing the 180th meridian

CHAPTER III

Geology

Provisional Remarks on the Examination of the Geological Specimens Brought by Roald Amundsen's South Polar Expedition from the Antarctic Continent (South Victoria Land and King Edward VII. Land). By J. Schetelig, Secretary of the Mineralogical Inst.i.tute of Christiania University

The collection of specimens of rocks brought back by Mr. Roald Amundsen from his South Polar expedition has been sent by him to the Mineralogical Inst.i.tute of the University, the Director of which, Professor W. C. Brogger, has been good enough to entrust to me the work of examining this rare and valuable material, which gives us information of the structure of hitherto untrodden regions.

Roald Amundsen himself brought back altogether about twenty specimens of various kinds of rock from Mount Betty, which lies in lat. 85 8'

S. Lieutenant Prestrud's expedition to King Edward VII. Land collected in all about thirty specimens from Scott's Nunatak, which was the only mountain bare of snow that this expedition met with on its route. A number of the stones from Scott's Nunatak were brought away because they were thickly overgrown with lichens. These specimens of lichens have been sent to the Botanical Museum of the University.

A first cursory examination of the material was enough to show that the specimens from Mount Betty and Scott's Nunatak consist exclusively of granitic rocks and crystalline schists. There were no specimens of sedimentary rocks which, by possibly containing fossils, might have contributed to the determination of the age of these mountains. Another thing that was immediately apparent was the striking agreement that exists between the rocks from these two places, lying so far apart. The distance from Mount Betty to Scott's Nunatak is between seven and eight degrees of lat.i.tude.

I have examined the specimens microscopically.

From Mount Betty there are several specimens of white granite, with dark and light mica; it has a great resemblance to the white granites from Sogn, the Dovre district, and Nordland, in Norway. There is one very beautiful specimen of shining white, fine-grained granite aplite, with small, pale red garnets. These granites show in their exterior no sign of pressure structure. The remaining rocks from Mount Betty are gneissic granite, partly very rich in dark mica, and gneiss (granitic schist); besides mica schist, with veins of quartz.

From Scott's Nunatak there are also several specimens of white granite, very like those from Mount Betty. The remaining rocks from here are richer in lime and iron, and show a series of gradual transitions from micacious granite, through grano-diorite to quartz diorite, with considerable quant.i.ties of dark mica, and green hornblende. In one of the specimens the quant.i.ty of free quartz is so small that the rock is almost a quartz-free diorite. The quartz diorites are: some medium-grained, some coa.r.s.e-grained (quartz-diorite-pegmat.i.te), with streaks of black mica. The schistose rocks from Scott's Nunatak are streaked, and, in part, very fine-grained quartz diorite schists. Mica schists do not occur among the specimens from this mountain.

Our knowledge of the geology of South Victoria Land is mainly due to Scott's expedition of 1901 -- 1904, with H. T. Ferrar as geologist, and Shackleton's expedition of 1907 -- 08, with Professor David and R. Priestley as geologists. According to the investigations of these expeditions, South Victoria Land consists of a vast, ancient complex of crystalline schists and granitic rocks, large extents of which are covered by a sandstone formation ("Beacon Sandstone,"

Ferrar), on the whole horizontally bedded, which is at least 1,500 feet thick, and in which Shackleton found seams of coal and fossil wood (a coniferous tree). This, as it belongs to the Upper Devonian or Lower Carboniferous, determines a lower limit for the age of the sandstone formation. Shackleton also found in lat. 85 15' S. beds of limestone, which he regards as underlying and being older than the sandstone. In the limestone, which is also on the whole horizontally bedded, only radiolaria have been found. The limestone is probably of older Palaeozoic age (? Silurian). It is, therefore, tolerably certain that the underlying older formation of gneisses, crystalline schists and granites, etc., is of Archaean age, and belongs to the foundation rocks.

Volcanic rocks are only found along the coast of Ross Sea and on a range of islands parallel to the coast. Shackleton did not find volcanic rocks on his ascent from the Barrier on his route towards the South Pole.