Sir,

I am writing to you in connection with the article by Reference GiovinettoGiovinetto and others (1966). In this paper the results of studies on the glaciers flowing through the Trans-Antarctic Mountains are very interesting.

Unfortunately there are two comments which must be made concerning the study of the regime of the drainage basin of these glaciers:

• a. The delineation of the drainage basin is purely hypothetical.

• b. The supposition that all the ice in this hypothetical basin flows exclusively through the glaciers mentioned, and that no ice crosses the western, southern or northern boundaries of this hypothetical drainage basin, cannot be justified at all.

It follows from this that a calculation of errors applied to the terms in the mass balance is nothing but an illusion, as it is not the error calculation which gives precision to a calculation, but the reality of the quantities one uses.

The positive budget they report is therefore of no significance.