244 SPITSBERGEN chap, xvm 



wood under which I found a vast number of Collembola, 

 which Sir John Lubbock, who has written a well-known 

 monograph on this order, is kindly working out. The Col- 

 lembola are wingless insects, and many of them are charac- 

 terised by a complete absence of tracheae. 



Next I landed at "Velvet Lawn," the name I gave to a 

 large stretch of sloping ground covered with an extra- 

 ordinary dark-green growth of Dryas octopetala, which had 

 evidently flowered very early. I could not find a single 

 flower of this plant that had not gone to seed. Velvet 

 Lawn culminates in a strange semicircle of separate moun- 

 tain bluffs. I called them the " Conclave," they looked so 

 much like a sitting of old gods. Their protection to the 

 north, and the influence of the eastern and southern sun, 

 might account for the early flowering of the plant. 



From here northward to the beginning of the tidal mud, 

 the water was covered with " bay ice," as the walrus hunters 

 call it. This is ice which, formed in bays, is still unbroken 

 up, though melted very thin by the early summer heat. 

 Hundreds of seals, old and young, were lying upon this 

 by the side of their old blow-holes. Between this and 

 the shore, however, was a stretch of land-water filled with 

 moving and grounded floes, through which w T e worked the 

 boat. We landed next at " The Glen," as I named a wide 

 entry among the hills which leads on the north - west to 

 a long winding valley up which Pedersen walked to look 

 for reindeer, but without success. This area is partly a 

 river-bed, partly a stretch of vegetation, and contains two 

 small-sized lakes. To the north the mountains approach 

 the bay at right angles, but southward more gradually, so 

 that the open area tapers in this direction till the moun- 

 tains again almost reach the bay some two miles lower down. 

 The river from the valley curls as it enters the glen, wind- 

 ing close round the base of the hill which forms the glen's 



