328 MERRIAM 



to year. From the abundant debris the sea waves have 

 built large spits and bars, shifting them from place to place 

 as each succeeding great storm came from a new direction. 

 Storms from the northwest built out a spit from the lee 

 of New Bogoslof till it joined the shore of Old Bogo- 

 slof, reducing the group to a single island. This spit, or 

 isthmus, included Ship Rock and prolonged the life of 

 that remnant by protecting it from the breakers. Then a 

 storm from the east breached the spit between Ship Rock 

 and Old Bogoslof and washed the greater part of it away, 

 but built a great spit on the northwest side of Old Bogoslof; 

 and this in turn was removed by westerly storms, which 

 made two other spits, trailing a little south of east from the 

 surviving islands. In 1895 there was a clear deep pas- 

 sage between the two, but in 1899 their ends had been con- 

 nected by a submerged bar, fully half a mile to the east of 

 the previous bar. 



So rapid is the demolition of the islands that their present 

 appearance tells little or nothing of their original forms; 

 and their complete destruction is but a question of time. 

 One might predict that in the next century the name Bog- 

 oslof would attach only to a reef or a shoal, were it not for 

 the possibility of new eruptions. The pulse of the volcano 

 is so slow that we have noted only two beats in more than a 

 century of observation, but such sluggishness should not be 

 taken as a symptom of death, or even decline, for volcanic 

 organisms are characteristically spasmodic in their activity. 

 Long before the sea has reestablished its perfect sway the 

 arteries of the mountain may again be opened and a new 

 and larger island put forth to contest its supremacy. 



ANIMAL AND PLANT LIFE ON BOGOSLOF. 



Plants. 



Chamisso, in his account of the Botany of the Kotzebue 

 Expedition, states that in 1817, according to reports, vege- 



