230 ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 



The chief ecouomic value rendered by tlie botany of the Pribilof 

 Ishxnds to the natives, is the abundance of the basket-making" rushes, 

 Juncaccv, which the old "barbies" gather In the margins of the many 



lakes and pools. ., t^ -u-i ^ 



lyiusHROOMS AT St. Paul.— The fungoid growths on the I'ribilot 

 Islands are abundant and varied, especially in and around the vicinity 

 of the rookeries and the killing grounds. On the west sh)pe of the 

 Black Bluffs at St. Paul, the mushroom, Afjaricus campestris,^:viiii gath- 

 ered in the season of 1872 by the natives, and eaten by one or two 

 families in the village, who had learned from the llussians to cook 

 them nicely. These seal island mushrooms have deeper tones of 

 pink and purple red in their gills than do those of my gathering in the 

 States, f kicked over many large spherical " puffballs," Lycoperdons, 

 in my tundra walks; myriads of smaller ones, Lycoperdon cinereuni {?) 

 cover patches near the spots where carcasses have long since rotted, 

 together with a pale-gray fnugns,Agarici(S Jimipufris, exceedingly deli- 

 cate and frosted exquisitely. Some ligneous fungi, Clavaria', will be 

 found atta<'hed to the decaying stems of Sallr reticiiJata (creeping: 

 willows). The irregularity of the annual growing of the agarics, and 

 their rapid growth when they do appear, make their determination 

 excessively difBcult; they are as unstable in their visits as are several 

 of the Lepuloptera. The cool humidity of climate during the summer 

 season on the Pribilof Islands is specially adapted to the mysterious, 

 but beautiful growth of these plants— the apotheosis of decay. The 

 coloring of several varieties is very bright and attractive, shading from 

 a purplish scarlet to a pallid white. 



Diverse eleganc'e and services of the cryptograms.— i be 

 range and diverse beauties of the numerous mosses and lichens on these 

 Pribilof Islands must serve as an agreeable and interesting study to 

 anyone who has the slightest love for nature. They undoubtedly 

 formed the first covering to the naked rocks, after those basaltic foun- 

 dations had been reared upon and above the bed of the sea— bare and 

 naked cliffs and bowlders, which with calm intrepidity presented their 

 callous fronts to the ice- wedging chisels of the Frost King; rain, wind, 

 and thawing moods destroyed their iron-bound strongness; particles 

 larger' and finer washed down and away made a surface of soil which 

 slowly became more and more capable of sustaining vegetable life. In 

 this virgin earth, says an old author— 



The wind brin-^s a small seed, wliich at first generates a diminntive moss, which, 

 spreadin"- bv decrees, with its tender and minute texture, resists, however, the most 

 intense cold, and extends over the whole a verdant velvet carpet. In fact, these 

 mosses are the medicines and the nurses of the other inhabitants of the vegetable 

 kiuodom [in the north]. The bottom parts of the mosses, which perisli and molder 

 away yearly, mingling with the dissolved but as yet crude parts of the earth com- 

 municate to it organized particles, which contributs' to the growth and nourishment 

 of other plants; they likewise yield salts and unguiuous phlogistic particles for the 

 nourishment of future vegetable colonies. The seeds of other plants, which the sea 

 and winds, or else the birds in their plumage, bring from distant shores, and scatter 

 among the mosses. 



Then the botanist needs no prompting when he observes the material 

 care of these mosses that screen the tender new arrivals from the cold, 

 and imbue them with the moisture which they have stored up, and- 



Nourish them with their own oily exhalations so that they grow, increase, aiid at 

 leno-th bear seeds, and afterwards dying, add to the unguiuous nutritive particles ot 

 the'earth. and at the same time diffuse over this new earth and mosses more seeds, 

 the earnest of a numerous posterity. 



