FRIDTJOF NANSEN. [norw. pol. exp. 



In 1888, I again saw the North polar ice in the Denmark Strait, on my 

 way to the crossing of Greenland. I then used the opportunity of collecting 

 a few samples of the mud on the ice-floes. One sample was taken from a 

 thick layer of mud which had evidently somewhere come from the neigh- 

 bourhood of land, whilst another smaller sample was collected from a greater 

 area of the ordinary ice-surface, which had the common dirty appearance. 

 The ice-floes from which the samples were taken were very old and thick; they 

 had evidently drifted in the sea for several years, and had probably crossed 

 the North Polar Basin. These samples were afterwards examined and described 

 by Dr. A. E. Tornebohm and Professor P. T. Cleve 1 . 



Dr. A. E. Tornebohm found the samples to be largely composed of mi- 

 neral grains of different kinds. But the mineral grains in the smaller sample, 

 collected from the greater area of the dirty ice-surface, were extremely small 

 and difficult to determine. In this sample a great many diatoms also occur- 

 red, which were examined by Professor Cleve who found 16 species and va- 

 rieties, which were all of them identical with species of diatoms collected by 

 Kjellman, during the Vega Expedition (in 1879), on an ice-floe near Cape 

 Wankarema on the north-east coast of Siberia, near Bering Straits. These 

 diatoms had been described by Cleve in 1883, and twelve of the sixteen spe- 

 cies, found in my samples from the Denmark Strait, were hitherto only known 

 from the ice-floe near Cape Wankarema. This seemed to indicate that the 

 ice I had seen in the Denmark Strait, had actually come from the Siberian 

 side of the North Polare Basin; as I had already assumed for other reasons. 

 But how the diatoms had come on to the surface of the ice, or where they 

 had originally lived neither Cleve nor I could tell 2 . 



During the Expedition with the Fram, I had my attention directed towards 

 all kinds of dust on the ice-floes. In the summer of 1894 the snow and ice 

 on the surface of the floe-ice was melted by the sun, and ponds of fresh 

 water were formed on the floes round the Fram. This began in the first part 

 of June. On June 11th, 1894, I noted in my diary (hat the ice was rapidly 



1 H. Mohn and F. Nansen, Wissenschaftliche Ergebnissc von Dr. F. Nansens Durch- 

 querung von Grflnland 1888. Petermann's Mitteilungen, Erganzungsheft No. 105, 

 1892, pp. 104-108. 



5 Professor H. H. Gban, has given a full account of what has been written about diatoms 

 from the polar ice, in vol. IV, No. 11, pp. 5 et seq., of this Report. Most of the papers 

 there cited by him were, however, published after our departure in 1893. 



