SCIENTISTS PRAISE SIR HUBERT WILKINS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18644, 22 December 1928, Page 10

SCIENTISTS PRAISE SIR HUBERT WILKINS.

ANTARCTIC FLIGHT OF GREAT IMPORTANCE. NEW YORK, December 20. Noted explorers and scientists are unanimous in their praise of Sir Hubert Wilkins’s Antarctic flight. Doctor Constantin Dumbrava, the Rumanian explorer, said: “His flight was magnificent—thrilling. I will not be surprised if he will claim the honour of being the first to correct the vague charts of the Antarctic Sea. He may even go further and be the first to fly over the South Pole.” Anthony Fiala said: “ What he did by ’plane in less than half a day would take months by dog team. He showed real skill and understanding.” Professor Charles Bearke, Columbia University, a noted geologist who accompanied Andrews into Mongolio in 1925, said: “ He has been able to do something we all wanted to see done, ever since the Amundsen, Shackleton and Scott expeditions.” Officials of the National Geographic

Society point out that the significance of Sir Hubert’s discovery may be that much of what is imagined to be continuous land around the South Pole, is in reality broken up into islands, or at least that a string of such islands borders the continent proper. Mr David White, secretary of the National Academy of Sciences, said: “ Sir Hubert Wilkins’s findings indicate the exposure of a bed of rock and stimulate hope for the discovery of new and important geologic features, including fossil bearing rock formations that may add greatly to our store of knowledge, not only of the climatic conditions, for those now prevailing are very different from those that formerly characterised these regions, but also of the migrations of land plants and land animals between Africa, South America and Australia, by the Antarctic land route during a former geologic period.”—Australian Press Association.