Ba FRIDTJOF NANSEN. M.-N. KI. 
unknown. But it does not seem improbable that it is of the same kind 
as the cold bottom-water of the northeastern Barents Sea, perhaps similar 
to that of the northern coastal shelf of Novaya Zemlya. It may there- 
fore be possibly that bottom-water of this kind may sink along the 
bottom into the deep North Polar Basin. 
Another question is whether cold bottom-water may actually be 
formed by vertical circulation in this same region during the winter? 
Makaroff’s overlying cold water-stratum between o and 200 metres 
(Stats. 77, 78, 82) has, on the whole, a much higher salinity than it has 
farther north, in the North Polar Basin, and also higher than at Amund- 
sen's Station 24 and 25 in the northwestern Barents Sea. This may be 
due to the fact that Makaroff’s Stations are in the region which recieves 
water from the Atlantic Current of the Barents Seal. During the 
winter and spring the salinity of this overlying water may be still more 
increased by the formation of ice, and by the vertical circulation caused 
by radiation of heat from the surface during the long winter. As the 
salinities are so much higher than in the North Polar Basin, the vertical 
circulation may go much deeper than was found to be the case on the 
Fram Expedition. But still it seems hardly probable that it should be 
able to penetrate the thick upper layer, with low salinities, at Makaroff’s 
Stats. 77 and 82, in an open sea where there is probably a fairly rapid 
horizontal circulation. The question still remains open, however, whether 
in the region nearer Novaya Zemlya there may not be higher salinities 
near the sea-surface, at least sometimes during the winter, especially if 
there be little horizontal circulation, and the sea be shallow, an exessive 
ice-formation with heavy ice-pressures may there produce bottom-water 
of comparatively high salinity (above 35'0 00) and temperatures about 
— 1° C. (or —o'9’C.) like that of the North Polar Basin. It was seen above 
that very cold bottom-water with high salinity is formed under similar 
conditions in the eastern and northeastern Barents Sea, although the 
same region of the sea was always covered with thick surface-layers of 
low salinity, between 33'0 and 34'5 00, whenever it has been examined 
in the summer. 
It is a very important fact that according to the observations 
of Captein Stokken of the Capella, there was comparatively warm 
- surface water with salinities of as much as 34°50 and even 3460 900, 
in July, 1901, in the very region of Makaroff’s Stats. 60 and 61, 
! See Knipowitsch, Ann. Hydr. u. Marit. Meteor, 1905, Pl. 7. See also the surface 
observations of Capt. Stokken, of the Capella, July, 1901, PI. I. 
