1904] BRIEFER ARTICLES 299 
The home of Arcterica is Bering Island, off the coast of Kam- 
chatka, remote geographically from any center of civilization, and hav- 
ing only occasional communication with its political parent, Russia. 
The specimen was collected by Dr. Leonhard Stejneger, of the United 
States National Museum, in 1882, when as a zoologist he was investi- 
gating the fur seals of the Commander Islands, to which group Ber- 
ing Island belongs. The single twig of Arcterica was.picked up 
accidentally among some specimens of Bryanthus Gmelini. In sub- 
sequent visits to the island Dr. Stejneger attempted to find the plant 
again, but was unable to rediscover it. 
It was upon Bering Island that George Wilhelm Steller, the botan- 
ist, passed the winter of 1741-42, while thirty men out of seventy-six 
died from scurvy and exposure, including Bering himself, the leader 
of the expedition. While the survivors were rebuilding their boat, 
Steller busied himself with collecting, and by the time the expedition 
sailed from the island, on August 14, 1742, he had secured a fair 
representation of the plants which had flowered up to that time, 211 
Species altogether. 
With the notion that Steller must have collected Arcterica on Ber- 
ing Island, and that his specimens had lain unnamed for more than 
a century and a half in the great botanical gazophylacium of Russia, 
the writer in September last visited the herbarium of the Imperial 
Academy of Sciences, in the city of Peter the Great, and waited in 
breathless expectancy at the foot of a stepladder, while the courteous 
curator upon its summit explored the upper pigeonholes for Steller’s 
Specimens. At last the answer came down, in the form of that con- 
clusive and irrevocable Russian mye, with which we are more familiar 
in its Americanized form, “nit,” recently current among street boys. 
There seems to be little hope that other specimens of Arcterica 
will come to light, except such as may be discovered hereafter by 
Some diligent collector who searches carefully for it on Bering Island. 
The exact spot on which it was found by Stejneger, on August 22, 
1882, was “a rounded hill, about 300 feet high, just behind the fish- 
ing settlement of Saranna. The hill rises up from the shore of 
description will aid in the identification of the plant. 
DESCRIPTION OF THE TYPE SPECIMEN OF ARCTERICA OXYCOCCOIDES. 
Specimen a branched twig 43" in length, bearing leaves and 
a flowers. (Fig. 7.) 
