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. 85deg. 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.

G. T. Prior, who has described the rocks collected by Scott’s expedition, gives the following as belonging to the complex of foundation rocks:  gneisses, granites, diorites, banatites, and other eruptive rocks, as well as crystalline limestone, with chondrodite.  Professor David and R. Priestley, the geologists of Shackleton’s expedition, refer to Ferrar’s and Prior’s description of the foundation rocks, and state that according to their own investigations the foundation rocks consist of banded gneiss, gneissic granite, grano-diorite, and diorite rich in sphene, besides coarse crystalline limestone as enclosures in the gneiss.

This list of the most important rocks belonging to the foundation series of the parts of South Victoria Land already explored agrees so closely with the rocks from Mount Betty and Scott’s Nunatak, that there can be no doubt that the latter also belong to the foundation rocks.

From the exhaustive investigations carried out by Scott’s and Shackleton’s expeditions it appears that South Victoria Land is a plateau land, consisting of a foundation platform, of great thickness and prominence, above which lie remains, of greater or less extent, of Palaeozoic formations, horizontally bedded.  From the specimens of rock brought home by Roald Amundsen’s expedition it is established that the plateau of foundation rocks is continued eastward to Amundsen’s route to the South Pole, and that King Edward VII.  Land is probably a northern continuation, on the eastern side of Ross Sea, of the foundation rock plateau of South Victoria Land.

Christiania,

September 26, 1912.

CHAPTER IV

The Astronomical Observations at the Pole

Note by Professor H. Geelmuyden

Christiania,

September 16, 1912.