THOMSON (Sir Charles Wyville).
On the Conditions of the Antarctic Regions: A Lecture delivered in the City Hall, Glasgow; under the Auspices of The Glasgow Science Lectures Association, on Thursday, 23rd November, 1876.
A RARE LECTURE ON THE ANTARCTIC BY THE SCIENTIST OF THE CHALLENGER EXPEDITION
A very good copy of Charles Wyville Thomson’s (1830-1882) important lecture on the Antarctic, here bound with 11 other Glasgow Science Lectures. Thomson’s lecture was delivered twenty years before Carsten Borchgrevink’s 1898 Southern Cross expedition and twenty-five before Scott’s 1902-1904 Discovery expedition. The two are widely regarded as igniting the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration.
So little was known of the Antarctic at that point - only the crews of Jules Dumont d’Urville and James Clark Ross voyages had stepped onto the Antarctic mainland - that Thomson took pains to distinguish the Antarctic from the better understood and much more widely-reported Arctic.
Thomson was chief scientist aboard the Challenger during its oceanographic expedition from 1872. His preliminary narrative of the expedition - The Voyage of the Challenger - also appeared in 1877. The present lecture, delivered in his native Scotland describes his experiences in the Antarctic during the expedition, with particular reference to physical conditions in the region. A concluding paragraph considers the attainment of the South Pole, concluding ominously “we can only anticipate disasters multiplied a hundred-fold should the South Pole ever become a goal of rivalry among the nations.”
Sir William Thomson’s “Navigation” (1876) and Archibald Geikie’s “Mountain Architecture” (1877) are among the other lectures included in this volume.
OCLC locates 11 copies but only 2 are recorded at auction Sotheby’s in 2000 (£3525) and the same in 2015 (£3750).
Renard, 1594; Rosove 1324; Spence, 1196.
