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,