468 ANNUAL, REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 30 



and irritating. Only after the awakening of the spring the living 

 beings are ready for the surplus work and intensive sexual and 

 emotional life of summer. 



The second half of the spring, the " green spring," begins sud- 

 denly with the breaking of ice in the rivers in June and, in 69°-70° 

 of north latitude, in July. It is accomplished in three days. Birds 

 of passage come in masses ; shoals of fish from the ocean enter the 

 rivers; trees and bushes are budding and sprouting; and everything 

 is green. So nature, the vegetable and animal life, passes from the 

 white spring with its night frosts almost immediately into full sum- 

 mer. Summer comes like a sudden leap, like a favorable storm, like 

 a yearly mutational period, or some natural revolution. 



2. Meteorological conditions are no less remarkable. While the 

 cosmological conditions refer to degrees of northern latitude, to the 

 continuous day in summer and night in winter, meteorology deals 

 with questions of the degree of frost, of the intensity of wind and 

 winter storms, and also of the thickness of the ice sheet and the snow 

 layer in the winter. The underground layer of the soil is on the 

 Avhole always frozen, and large areas of this ever-frozen ground 

 spread far southward even into the Temperate Zone. In the summer 

 the ground thaws out, but, even in the southern part of the Yakutsk 

 Province, only for three-quarters of a meter, and close to the Polar 

 Sea for half a meter or even less. 



On the other hand, the ice sheet on the lakes and on the rivers 

 is 2 meters thick or even more. When you want to pierce the ice 

 that thick, for setting nets or simply for taking Avater, you have to 

 cut with an ice pick a round funnel 3 meters in diameter. The 

 person working wall gradually sink down and then completely go 

 under the surface of the ice; only the upper portion of his ice pick 

 will be seen; and still he will have no water and the ice under his 

 feet will be absolutely dry. Even when cut through, the water hole 

 must be cleaned up and pierced anew twice a day, morning and 

 evening, or else the ice sheet w^ill close again and the hole will shut 

 together at least for 2 feet in thickness. 



Then, again, on account of the ever-frozen ground, the rivers begin 

 to freeze not only from above but also from beneath. Very soon 

 the water flows as if encased in a round tube of ever-frozen material. 

 The surface sheet of the ice is formed of small tablets, thin and 

 brittle as the thinnest glass, but on the very bottom in the water 

 begins to form the bottom ice, the so-called mlo^ which has the shape 

 and the consistency of half-dissolved snow. In this double manner 

 tlie river freezes with the utmost rapidity. Shallow currents in 

 the mountains in more quiet places freeze to the bottom. Then 

 the water flows on the surface of the sheet, forming the so-called 

 nalhed (ice surface water). This water is immediately covered 



