268 ANNUAL EEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 34 



Col. Henry Wemyss Feilden, who was attached to the Alert as 

 naturalist, said that during the short period when there is practically 

 no night, butterflies are continually on the wing, if the sun's face is 

 not obscured by clouds or ])assing snow showers. He also said that 

 about 1 month in every year is the longest period in Avhich it is possible 

 for these insects to appear as winged adults, and that about 6 weeks 

 is the limit of time allowed plant-feeding caterpillars, the land during 

 all the rest of the year being under snow and ice. The caterpillars 

 living in this region may be frozen until they become as hard as ice 

 and as brittle as rotten twigs ; yet when it warms up and they thaw 

 out they come again to life, and begin to feed in the most unconcerned 

 manner. 



In northwestern Greenland, according to Prof. Emil VanhofFen, 

 beetles, butterflies, moths, wasps, flies, and a few other kinds of in- 

 sects inhabit the whole rocky coastal strip that borders the inland 

 ice, and some kinds have even been found on the nunataks — rocky 

 islands entirely surrounded by ice. Wedged in between two ice 

 streams of great size, with a third of its coast line on the sea, the 

 Karajak nunatak has a rich insect fauna. On this large island be- 

 tween the sea and the inland ice the insects are better protected than 

 they are on the smaller mmataks that are entirely surrounded by 

 the ice. 



Here both plant feeding and predaceous insects are in evidence, 

 though only a few kinds are abundant. The butterflies and moths 

 are more numerous both in individuals and in kinds than the wasps 

 parasitic on them — their caterpillars loiow very v/ell how to conceal 

 themselves. 



Far to the east of Greenland, curving in an irregular crescent about 

 the western border of the Kara Sea south of Franz Josef Land, lies 

 Novaya Zemlj^a, a long, narrow island divided near the middle by 

 a narrow winding channel called the Matotchkin Shar. It is sep- 

 arated from the Siberian mainland only by the Kara Strait and 

 Vaygach Island. 



The climate of Novaya Zemlya is colder than that of Spitzbergen, 

 though it is milder than that of the northeastern portion of Siberia. 

 In the middle portion of the western coast the average temperature 

 in the winter months is —4°. The average summer temperature at 

 the Matotchkin Shar is 36.5° — lower than it is at Boothia Felix or 

 on Melville Island north of North America — and toward the south 

 the temperature decreases. On the eastern coast the summer tem- 

 perature is lower than it is on the western coast. But thanks to the 

 influence of a current that bathes especially the northwest coast — 

 which may be considered as the extreme northeastern limit of the 

 Gulf Stream drift — the shores of Novaya Zemlya are less ice-bound 



