THE YAKUTSK FRONTIER COUNTRY. 53 



New Siberians are the only ones visited by Russian traders and inhabitants of the polar 

 tundra zone. These islands are generally reached in spring before the thawing of the ocean 

 ice, and the traders drive over the frozen surface of the sea on light sledges drawn by reindeer 

 or dogs and, passing the short summer on the islands, return home in antumn when the ice has 

 again set on the surface of the sea. The Siberian traders are generally drawn to these islands 

 by the quantity of mammoth bones found there. The New Siberian Islands are of gi-eat impor- 

 tance from a scientific point of view as they form a vast and interesting cemetry of the whole 

 organic world, as it at one time existed under 75° and 76° of north latitude. This organic world 

 not only consisted of the large extinct animals like the mammoth, two varieties of the rhinoce- 

 ros, buffalo, muskox, three varieties of deer and even a breed of horses, but also of the 

 numerous trunks of extinct trees belonging to the middle tertiary, mioceue formations, allied 

 to the genus of deciduous trees peculiar to the temperate zone and not gi'owing at present in 

 any part of Siberia, like the elm and hazel. 



The unusual abundance of skeletons and remains of extinct animals and plants in the 

 New Siberian Islands is due to the conditions of the soil consisting of post-tertiary strata 

 with intermittent layers of pure ice, spread over such an enormous area that if, for example, 

 the temperature of the air upon the island of New Siberia rose for a prolonged period above 

 zero, except the four mountains forming its framework, consisting of masses of granite that 

 have abruptly raised the rocky strata of the Jurassic formation, the whole island would become 

 converted into a liquid paste, which together with the fossil remains included in it, would 

 become the prey of the waves. At the present time the flora and fauna alike of the New 

 Siberian islands are extremely meagre. In the whole summer passed during the years 

 1885 and 1886 by the members of the Academy Expedition, Doctor Bunge and Baron Toll, 

 upon the New Siberian islands, there were but few days when it was possible to make any 

 collections of flowering plants or live insects. One or two clear and comparatively warm days 

 alternated with cold and cloudy weather, and the living vegetable covering again disappeared 

 beneath a layer of snow. Upon the rocks of the lesser New Siberian islands, Stolbovoi and 

 Liakhov, past which Nordenskjold's expedition went in the second half of August, the weather 

 being fine and the sea perfectly free from ice, comparatively few birds were nesting and the 

 neighbouring sea shewed no traces of large marine animals. 



But however unfavourable the climatic conditions of the Siberian littoral of the Arctic 

 Ocean, it cannot be said that its depths are absolutely devoid of life. The deep ocean flora 

 consists of seaweeds (algae), of which in the whole of the shore waters of the Arctic Ocean, 

 thanks to the careful investigations of Nordenskjold's expedition, 35 species were found, among 

 them 16 belonging to the family of the fucoideae and 12 to that of llie florideao. At the 

 same time the seaweeds of the Siberian shore are far from attaining the luxuriant develop- 

 ment and the vast dimensions which are as a rule proper to the algae of the polar seas. On 

 the other hand seaweeds are almost entirely absent from the iuiniediale coast zone of the Si- 

 berian sea. The marine flora attains its highest development at some distance from the shore 

 in the sub-littoral zone, and only there in some few spots, as for example around the island 

 of Taimyr are to be found localities rich in seaweeds. 



The Siberian coast of the Arctic Ocean has no lack of marine animals. Of the lower 

 animals, Nodenskjold's expedition found near the mouth of the Kolyma cup-shaped sponges, 



