42 NOTES ON TEE KURIL ISLANDS. 



Flora. — My notes upon the flora of the islands are very 

 meagre, and, I am afraid, scarcely worth recording. 



Kunashir, Shikotan, Yetorup, and Urup are more or less 

 wooded with pines, birch, willow, alder, mountain ash, and other 

 trees and shrubs. There is in places a dense growth of bamboo- 

 grass (sasa) ; and umbelliferous plants, nettles, etc., as high as a 

 man, grow in great luxuriance in the gullies and around the bases 

 of the cliffs and hills which slope towards the beaches. On the 

 sand-dunes and beaches above high-water mark, coarse grasses, 

 a kind of wild pea, and a sweet-smelling rose grow. The Hat 

 ground in the valleys is usually swampy, and here are to be found 

 several kinds of rushes, mosses, grasses, and many kinds of wild 

 flowers, amongst which I noticed irises, lilies, daisies, buttercups, 

 pinks, dandelions, myosotis, terrestrial orchids, geraniums, etc. ; 

 ferns, sorrel, wild celery, a small wild onion, etc. Several kinds 

 of berries grow on most of the islands. Red currants grow wild 

 on Shikotan. The fruit is large, but full of seeds. 



On Kunashir some of the timber is of fine growth ; but on 

 Yetorup it is considerably stunted, whilst on Urup it is still more. 

 North of Urup the only trees are to be found on Ketoi, where 

 there is a small patch of stunted firs on the north side. Some of 

 the smaller islands have no growth of scrub even, but on most 

 there are generally to be found some scrub pine and alder, and 

 occasionally willow. 



The lower slopes of the hills are usually covered with a thick 

 carpet of mosses and short grasses, amongst which wild flowers are 

 abundant. Lichens and mosses occur higher up. Mushrooms and 

 " puff-balls " are to be found, but they are not common. 



ALG.E. — Probably in no part of the world is there a greater 

 luxuriance of growth of seaweeds than occurs in the waters of the 

 Kuril Islands. Vast forests of Melanosperince surround every 

 island in the chain, the most conspicuous member of this group 

 of algae being Nercocystis Liltkeanus. 



Immense fields of this are found everywhere, some of the 

 islands being surrounded by an unbroken belt over half a mile in 

 width. It grows in depths up to about 18 fathoms. The blades 

 are about a foot wide, composed of a central hollow-jointed stem, 

 about the size of the little finger, and with a thin frill on either 

 side. They sometimes measure 140 or 150 feet in length. 



