The Geographical Branch of the Department of Mines and Technical Surveys was created in 1947, and in the 12 years of its existence has conducted original research in many branches of Geography;1.2 among these research programmes has been an extensive project for the study of land and sea ice.

The art, science and sport of conducting scientific traverses across the Antarctic continent has advanced so rapidly during the past decade that we are making considerable progress towards understanding the main characteristics of that continent and its ice mantle. Many reports of recent work are provisional, so some changes of detail in the following account may eventually prove necessary. Nevertheless, some major features are now well established, such as the great depth of the subglacial floor to the east of the Ross Sea, and the observations that show considerable sections of the rock of East Antarctica† to be above sea level. On the other hand, the past glaciological history of the continent and the state of the present mass balance of the ice sheet still need much more investigation before we can be satisfied with the answers. The continued activity in Antarctica should result in our knowledge of the continent advancing much further during the coming decade.

The northern part of Canada is probably the most isolated, sparsely populated, and inaccessible land mass in the northern hemisphere. The Yukon and Northwest Territories comprise an area of 1½ million sq. miles and contain only 34,000 people, 8,300 of whom are Eskimo. Into this vast area only one navigable river penetrates, and the sea lanes around its perimeter are open for only three months in the year. This isolation and scarcity of people are reflected in the following comments of the Royal Commission on Canada's Economic Prospects: “In the whole of the Northwest Territories…the military bases, mining camps, trading posts and administrative centres are hardly more than pin-pricks in the surrounding bush and muskeg and barrens. There will be important economic development in this area in the years to come. But it would take the ruthlessness of a Peter the Great to plant any large centres of population there.”

Most of the world's tropical and sub-tropical oceanic islands were settled by man, and their floras and faunas modified by his activities, some centuries before the development of any scientific interest in them. The original vegetation and fauna of islands like Ascension, the Azores, Bermuda, St Helena or Mauritius cannot now be described with any degree of certainty, while the native communities of many others have been markedly changed. Consequently the few remaining undisturbed oceanic islands are of great scientific importance, and many of these lie in the southern temperate and sub-Antarctic zones.

In outline, the Antarctic continent crudely resembles a pear. It is indented on two sides by arms of the ocean, the Ross and Weddell Seas. These indentations are even greater than an outline map would suggest, for the seas extend far toward the interior of the continent beneath the world's two largest floating ice shelves, bearing the names of their respective discoverers, the English sea captain, Ross, and the German explorer, Filchner.

This account of an Arctic whaling voyage made in 1894 was discovered among the papers of the late W. S. Bruce, in the Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh. Bruce and the author, a sailor named Redgrave, had sailed together in the Balaena during the cruise of the Dundee whalers to the Antarctic in 1892–93. Redgrave probably wrote the account at Brace's request.

A century ago geologists first began to consider the possibility of large lateral shifts of the continents. Reconstructions of the ancient positions of the continents have been proposed at various times since to try to explain past climatic zones, faunal distributions, similar orogenic sequences and structural trends on adjacent continents, and many other detailed geological events. Prominent amongst the hypotheses is that generally known as the Continental Drift Hypothesis, developed independently by F. B. Taylor and A. Wegener fifty years ago and later modified by A. L. du Toit andothers. In this hypothesis two primeval continents, Laurasia and Gondwanaland, are supposed to have formed at the north and south poles, to have broken up and possibly to have grown, and the pieces to have drifted to the positions of the present continents. The continents are moved around by forces of unknown origin and their interaction with each other and with the substratum gives rise to orogenesis. Due in large part to the lack of any known forces capable of producing these movements the hypothesis is nowadays less favoured than others requiring no drift. Recently, however, the study of palaeomagnetism has provided an independent line of evidence. From it the ancient latitudes and orientations of the continents can be worked out and relative displacements may possibly be revealed.

The Mackenzie River is the seventh longest river in the world and with its tributaries drains a million sq. miles of northern Canada. Its drainage basin includes almost all of that portion of the District of Mackenzie lying south of the so-called “tree line”, two large sections of Yukon Territory and portions of the provinces of Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia. When flying from Fort Smith, lat. 60° N., to Inuvik near the Arctic Ocean it seems to be an endless expanse of swamp and tundra with almost no possibilities for logging, either now or in the future. Closer inspection, however, shows that there are forested areas capable of supplying timbers suitable for lumber and heavy construction, as well as poles for piling and mining timbers. It is with these forests that this article is primarily concerned.

On 1 January 19081 left New Zealand for Antarctica with Ernest Shackleton, in a 220-ton barquentine with auxiliary engines of 40 horse-power. Two years later, on a 750 ton barque—the Terra Nova—I left again with Scott on his famous but ill-fated journey during which the South Pole was actually reached. Half a century later I journeyed south again—in just as good company but under vastly different conditions—first in the Royal Yacht Britannia with H.R.H. the Duke of Edinburgh and then as the guest of the Americans on their great expedition, Operation “Deep Freeze IV”. I am the last survivor of Scott's Northern Party and first I want to give some idea of adventures at that time, for they were both varied and typical of those days, if somewhat extreme, and point well the contrast between then and now.

This paper is a report on the preliminary work of a long-term study of the construction, use and cultural significance of kayaks among Greenlanders living in the Umánaq area of north-west Greenland.

[The British Antarctic Expedition, 1839–43, consisted of two Naval vessels, H.M.S. Erebus and Terror, with Sir James Clark Ross as leader and Captain F. R. M. Crozier as second-in-command. The objects of the expedition were mainly concerned with terrestrial magnetism, a subject of particular interest to Ross who had discovered the North Magnetic Pole in 1831. The expedition circumnavigated the Antarctic continent and made a number of important geographical discoveries. It twice penetrated the pack ice.of the Ross Sea; it discovered, and roughly charted, 500 miles of new coastline in Victoria Land; it discovered Ross Island and the Ross Ice Front, also the James Ross Island group; it visited Prince Edward Islands, les Crozet and les Kerguelen; and it sighted Joinville Island and the Balleny Islands. Observations of terrestrial magnetism were made from stations, either permanent or temporary, set up during the voyage.

About fifty species of terrestrial arthropods have been collected in Antarctica; these include mites, ticks, springtails, sucking lice, biting lice and flies. The mites include both free-living and parasitic forms, the springtails and flies are free-living, and the ticks and lice are parasitic. The ticks, parasitic mites, and biting lice are associated with birds, and the sucking lice with seals. The number of species are about equally divided between free-living and parasitic forms. The ability of insects and mites to survive the very low winter temperatures and frequent strong winds of Antarctica is of considerable interest; judged in relation to commonly accepted ideas of tolerance, the environment is extremely forbidding.

An icebreaker is beset. Motion is impossible because of lateral pressure and packing in the surrounding ice. During the long hours of patient waiting for the pressure to subside, discussion on board often turns to the use of explosives as a means to break the ship free.

The major economic benefit which the U.S.S.R. derives from its Arctic territory comes from the exploitation of mineral resources. Detailed information about production has long been withheld, at least in the case of important minerals, but enough general information is available to permit a summary in broad terms of current activity in this field. Murmanskaya Oblast' is not included in the summary, because its relatively mild climate, near absence of permafrost, and favourable location render it atypical of the Soviet Arctic as a whole.

New Zealanders interested in Antarctic exploration have for some years been concerned about the condition of the old huts in McMurdo Sound, built and occupied by the expeditions of the “heroic age”, and during the past two or three years sporadic attempts have been made to tidy up Shackleton's hut at Cape Royds and Scott's hut at Cape Evans. Working parties from H.M.N.Z.S. Endeavour and men from “Scott Base” have done urgent repair work and a certain amount of cleaning up, but it was evident that a more extensive project, properly organized and supervised, was necessary if the huts were to be made readily accessible to interested visitors and restored to a condition more in keeping with their historical interest.

The traditional methods of studying the marine biology of any coastline almost always involve the collection of plants and animals when the shore is exposed by the fluctuation of the tides. In the Antarctic, however, intertidal collecting is generally impossible due to the continuous abrasive action of floating ice, which scours this zone clean. Further difficulties are encountered in areas where fast ice extends out directly into the water, leaving no intertidal zone exposed. Thus our knowledge of the marine plants and animals of the Antarctic has been obtained largely through the use of the dredge. Skottsberg, in 1906, provided the first indication that there was, below the action of the ice, a rich growth of large marine algae. Unfortunately the bulk of his collections were lost when the Antarctic, the ship of the ill-fated Swedish Antarctic Expedition, 1901–03, was crushed and sunk by pack ice.

Though the history of polar exploration stretches over many centuries, it is only in very recent (or one might say contemporary) times that a serious interest has been shown on the part of states in the advancement of territorial claims in these perpetually frozen regions of the earth. Reasons for this new development are not difficult to find, and may, very largely, be explained in terms of economic and strategic considerations. The rapidly growing population of the world;† the pressing desire everywhere for a higher standard of living; the technological advancement in transportation and communication; new geographic conceptions, and a modern strategy of military operations are all factors which help to clarify this phenomenon. As a result of these and many other recent developments, which we shall not attempt to catalogue here, it is not unreasonable to assume that the polar regions will in the future become more rather than less important in world affairs.

About 80 million acres on the mainland of the Northwest Territories and Yukon, and over 40 million acres on the Arctic islands, are under oil and gas exploration permit. Exploration permits were issued in the Arctic islands for the first time in June 1960, following promulgation in April of new Canada Oil and Gas Regulations for federal government lands. The issue of these permits extended the northern oil and gas search from the Alberta and British Columbia borders, in lat. 60° N., northward to the Arctic islands; in terms of land area this is one of the most widespread oil and gas searches in the world. The Arctic islands exploration also holds particular interest since it is the farthest north oil and gas exploration ever carried out.