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SHACKLETON'S $OUTH POLE
EXPEDITION.
(Daily Press, 3rd April) Lieutenant SHACKLETON did not reach the South Pole, it is true, but he got almost near enough to hear the Hieland Man greet him from the truck, ith the customary Coot' Marnin'; and that was more than ever mortal had done before. The quidnunes had expected him to find a great many things there, and had been unwise enough to make out a list; but characteristically the vaticinations turned out like Hongkong weather forecasts, and were all untrue. They hadn't hit it off this time; which is perhaps not much to be wondered at con- sidering how slender were the grounds they had to goon. For the last century the rising generation has learnt as its first lesson in geography that the earth was round: just like an orange, and was flattened at the Poles; and many of us, trusting to this wise utterance almost expected to find there, after the manner of oranges, a dimple. To the everlasting disgrace of Lieut. SHACKLE TON, instead of a dimple, he found himself on an elevated plateau, almost two miles high. The protuberance of this Equator is only some thirteen miles so that the Lieutenant's elevated Plateau has shorn the dictum of the geography books of much of its glory. According to the meteorologists Lieut. SHACKLETON should have found the weather at the Pole delightfully genial; ought, in fact, to bave discarded his antare tic wraps and jumpefs, and gone in fo light flannels and yachting straw hat; but wickedly, he succeeded in getting himself and his crew all frost bitten with a temper ature of some 73 degrees below Doubtless at numerous meetings of the Royal Geographical Society all these dilinquencies will be duly brought up to his discredit; so perhaps for the sake of humanity, we need not here further dilate on them, but leave to others better provided with implements of torture the merited castigation.
zero.
Polar
THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
Thanks to the enthusiasm of the last fifteen years the great southern Continent is, at last, beginning to be fairly well known, but curiously nearly all our preconceived ideas have been proved to be unfounded. It is a dreary waste of unin- habitable land, whereon not a single mammal has been found, and where, except along its coasts, "even the migratory Arctic birds find it difficult to establish a footing, Practically life of all kinds has been reduced to a minimum, and the explorer has to bring from more genial climes everything necessary to support life, so that exploration in attend ed with even greater difficulties than in the same latitudes in the northern circumpolar lands. The stalwart explorers who under all these difficulties;+and bearing still more literally even thaun Arctic lands, their lives in their hands, fre, if possible, entitled to still higher honour; for it is to an even greater extent true that it has been to careful foresight and organisation, added to per- severence and pluck of no ordinary kind, that the success of the two remarkable ex- peditions of Captain Scorr, and Lieutenant SHACKLETON has been entirely due. It has not been, of course, possib'e in a telegraphic message all the way from the antipodes to do more than give the very briefst summary of the knowledge gained by the recent ex- pédition, but from what we have been able to learn it has been neither small, nor
uninteresting.
Scientific men have long foreseen that in the Great Southern Continent lis concealed many of the secrets of the past history of the world; yet it is rema kable how momentarily small has been the information already
[April 12, 1909.
which for him only acts in carrying matter from the tops of the mountains and dropping it in bottoms, may after all be concerned in the formation of the very mountain chains it momentarily is engaged in destroying. The physicist, intense in studying the isostasy of the same mountain chain, forgets that Jupiter and Venus by the seemingly negligeable factor of their gravitational action on the earth may actually have had a hand in the same. process. Finally the meteorologist, who quite dissents from Lieutenant SHACKLE- TON's weather experiences, is apt to forget that cosmic influences, and even gravity its If may have much to say to climate. Reasoning from analogy there is good reason to believe that the law of decrease of tem- perature with increase of height cannot be quite the same where nights and days are of six months' duration, as where they interchange every twenty-four hours, yet, of course, the increase of temperature under pressure would be the same in both instances; this lone would afford an
elicited. Curiously all the geological evidences as yet collected have gone to show the extraordinary development in the regions about the South Pole of plutonic rocks, to the almost complete effacement of sedi- mentary formations. This is not to be accounted for on cosmical grounds, as in the exactly antipodal regions in the North, which, of course, would have been subjected to exactly similar cosmical conditions, slimentary forma tions occupy ឥ very important place We know that at various periods trou | Carboniferous to late Tertiary, so late as the close of the Pliocene, the lands about the North Pole must have enjoyed a mild climate, as mild, in fact, as many sub tropical regions at the present time; the cosmical, as compared with the terrestrial conditions must always have been similar in both hemispheres, as both must have received an equal amount light and heat from the sun. Were the contemporary climates in the Antarctic regions similar; or did they differ th ay marked degree? This is the great efficient explanation for the fact that while question to be solved by Antarctic explor Captain SCOTT found his southerly winds ation. Hitherto the only organic remains under Mount Erebus were invariably warm, that have been found in Antarctic regions Lieut. SHACKLETO when he came to the have been some obscure remains of fossil lofty plateau off which these same winds were wood, but too far decayed to display blowing found the average temperature the sufficient structure to enable the order to coldest yet registered on the earth. Alto- which it belonged to be even approximately gether there is a vast amount of scientific determined. Now it has been long known information to be gained by Antarctic ex- that the present Marsupial animals of ploration; and the curious result that the Australia exhibit many points of resem-information gained is almost invariably ance to corresponding animals in South contrary to previous conclusions, so far from America, and South Africa, which the damping our desire for further exploration, naturalist school of geologists can should bave the directly opposite effect in explain, they allege, by presuming a former stimulating our efforts. The late Professor land counection. This theory is especially HAUGHTON used to say of physics that his nauseons to a certain school of geologist's bad experiments always turned out the best. who hold the theory that such as the surface Lieut. SHACKLETON's most uncalled-for of the earth now is, so it has been fr discoveries will probably in the end be equally hailed for the light they throw on terrestrial physics.
countless ages.
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PHILIPPINES AND FREE TRADE.
(Daily Press, April 5th.) Though a large number of natives of the Philippine Islands on the Fourth of July last signed the monster petition infavour of Free Trade between the islands and the
Auother school, that of the physicists, has recently been rising into importanc, with theories not quite accordant with either. The earth, according to the new school, is in a state of what they call Isostasy;-that is to say, the internal and external forces are so nicely balanced, that the whole assumes a form dictated by the wants of internal gravitation. Thus the Himalayas are at they are because the matter under them which attracts them by its gravitation is United States, yet now that the proposal lighter than that under the neighbouring is embodied in a Bill at pr-sent before the plains. Geologists have long been wander Washington Congress there appears to be a ing in search of their particular "philoso-considerable body of public opinion in the pher's stone," which would enable themo islands strongly opposed to the measure. raise up mountains where they most desire The Filipino Assembly has passed a resolution them; so they are momentarily enchanted disapproving it, and the Filipino Chamber with their late opponents, who, they assume, of Commerce has expressed the opinion that have at last found out for them the " eleva the free importation of American products tory force" which they have so long des re-into the islands should be limited to agricul- ed. Viewed from fe outside all these theories present much the sime aspect as the strife of the old Schoolmen, who we ried themselves over the substance, and divided themselves into the two bitterly opposed schools of the Homojosunists and Homoio- sunists, -oblivious of the fact till pointe out from outside that after all there was but the "jot" of difference. All these schools are equally looking to the new continent to find themselves right, and Lieutenant SHACKLETON's unexpected mount in plateau at the South Pole, where, according to the geclogists, it has no business to be, will doubtless prove the cause of much indiscri- minate quill-breaking, and heart-agitating. After all, all these schools are, of course, right, but all are equally wrong in suppos- ing that their particular application of their own theories is sufficient to explain every thing in nature. The geologists cannot be brought to see that the force of gravity
tural and industrial machinery and other machinery useful for exploiting the hidden wealth of the country. The Chamber, which formerly favoured no limit to the free im portation into the United States of the pro ducts of the Philippine Islands, has changed its opinion and accepts certain limitations which are proposed by Congress, but asks that no limit to free importation should be imposed on hemp. According to the Ameri. can newspapers published in Manila the hostile attitude of the Filipino Assembly towards the Payne Bill is inspired by the idea that the Bill would detrimentally affect the prospect of the attainment of indepen- dence for the islands. This fear was, in fact, expressed in a rider to the resolution passed by the Assembly, but it is denied by mem.. bers of the Assembly that this constitutes their predominating objection to the pro- posal. What they say is that unlimited free importation of American products means a
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