THE YAKUTSK FRONTIER COUNTRY. 4: / 



(luring the year, wiiich only amounts to 310 millimetres compared to 360 millimetres depos- 

 ited in the forest zone of Eastern Siberia. The winters are also less snowy (38 millimetres 

 against 56): the summer rainfall is however almost the same in both places. According to 

 observations made at Sagaslyr near the mouth of the Lena, there is very little moisture de- 

 posited iu the polar tundra zone, not more than 86 millimeters in the year, 45 millimeters 

 of which fall during the three summer months, which clearly shows the extremely continental 

 nature of the climate of the Yakutsk frontier country, and especially of its north-eastern portion. 



The vegetation of the south-western part of the Yakutsk region differs in general but 

 little from that of Eastern Siberia. The trees are the same as those of Siberia proper and 

 only outside the borders of the Yakutsk region on the south-western slopes of the Staiiovoi 

 range there exist certain varieties which disappear in Siberia as soon as the Ural mountains 

 are reached. Generally speaking, the zone of forests of full grown trees and forest industries 

 In the Yakutsk frontier country is completely covered with continuous, dense and often impen- 

 etrable forests and extensive morasses above which rise, in some places, little islands from 

 the surface of the sea, barren mountain heights either connected in chains or standing isolate 

 and bare. 



The flora of the grasses in the forest zone is naturally poor in the thick of the woods 

 where grass hardly grows at all, but in the forest glades and clearings and on the open 

 marshes, river banks, mountain slopes and rocks, the flora is rich and characterized by local 

 plants which make their appearance beyond the Yenessei along the mountain slopes of the 

 Sayan chain and spreading over all the mountain ranges intersecting the Yakutsk frontier 

 country. These plants include, for instance, some of the spear-wort family, namely, three varieties 

 of thallchtrum, (petaloideum T., rufinerve, L. et sparsiflorum Turcz), two anemones (anemone 

 Sibirica L., and Pulsatilla davurica Spr.), chickweed (calthanataus Pall), isopyrum fumarioides, 

 L. two aquilegiae (aquilegia sibirica Lm and parviflora Led.), one variety of larkspur, (d(^lph- 

 inium grandiflorum L.), three kinds of aconites (aconitum volubile Pall., villosum Rch., Kus- 

 netzovi Turcz.); some of the plants found here only grow within the borders of the Yakutsk 

 frontier country, like delphinium crassicaule TiOd and others, and are American types like ran- 

 nunculus Purshii Hook and afl'inis Pi. Br. and otlu-r numerous families of plants. The polar 

 tundra zone is of a very different character; in summer the tnudraS' are free from snow but 

 the soil is always frozen to a depth of half an arshino below the surface and consists of 

 alternate layers of earth and ice. Li these strata besides the semi-fossil sea shells, of types 

 still existing in the Arctic Ocean, bones and skeletons and even bodies of extinct animals of 

 Northern Siberia are found, such as the mammoth and rhinoceros, often in an excellent state 

 of preservation. 



The surface vegetation of the tundras consists principally of moss, of the poly- 

 trichum, bryum and hypnum varieties. From underneath the dai-k brown surface, grass crops 

 up in places, here and there forming grass plots, but more oftet growing in seperate patches 

 on the bare clay sitil. This kiml of grass flora nut (uily closely resembles that of the corres- 

 ponding parts of Siberia proper but is also much like the flora of Western Europe. Thus, 

 out of 92 distinctly flowering plants collected by Xordenskjold's expedition, at their winter 

 quarters beyond the eastern extremity of the Yakutsk frontier country, but still on the shore 



