Lieutenant (afterwards Sir) E. H. Shackleton, who had accompanied Scott, led an expedition to the south in 1908–9, which landed at the foot of Mount Erebus. That mountain was ascended by Professor T. W. E. David, who also, with Dr. D. Mawson, reached the south magnetic pole in 72° 25´ S., 155° 16´ E. Shackleton himself led the famous march which brought him to 88° 23´ S., 162° E., a great advance towards the south pole itself, which might actually have been attained but for the lack of food. The scientific results of the expedition were of high value, and revealed the desirability of prosecuting researches in the same field; and in 1910 Scott led a second expedition, with a larger scientific staff than had ever been taken before, the main party of which was landed at Cape Evans, McMurdo Sound. Of two other parties, one was landed on the west side of the sound; another, which worked at first from Cape Adare, was subsequently transferred to Terra Nova Bay, Victoria Land. A considerable area was thus covered on this part of the Antarctic coast, while Scott’s march upon the pole was designed to follow Shackleton’s route. The splendour of success was outshone by the splendour of disaster: Scott and four companions, having reached the pole, died bravely on the return journey, overcome by adverse conditions. The work of the expedition as a whole, taking that of the other parties into account, was a brilliant scientific triumph. The honour of first reaching the pole, however, fell to a Norwegian explorer, Captain Roald Amundsen, who, leading a small but admirably equipped expedition, succeeded in his endeavour at the end of 1911, and he and Scott thus left the way open to research on the Antarctic land-mass unhampered for the future by the natural desire to reach a certain point upon it. In the same year expeditions (not specifically concerned with the attainment of that point) were led south by the German Lieutenant Filchner, whose immediate goal was Coats Land, in the “Weddell” (or South American) quadrant, and by Dr. Mawson, whose objective was Adélie Land, on the opposite flank of the continent, while various projects are also under the consideration of other voyagers, British and American. There is room for the work of all these and more--the Antarctic region is now known as a vast land-area fringed by deep seas separating it from the other continental masses. Amundsen’s observations would seem to prove it a single homogeneous mass, and not to be divided into two, or to consist in part of an archipelago. It still remains to investigate the nature of any geological relation between it and the other continents, to study the extension and physiography of the great mountain ranges which are known, and their relation to the polar plateau, and to deal with the many other problems such as are suggested by observations already made on the climate, the ice conditions, and the distribution of flora and