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NATURE 



\March 29, 1888 



Mr. R. Abercromby and Mons. C. Moussette each exhibited 

 some very fine photographs of clouds ; and Mr. J. S. Dyason 

 showed a number of sketches of skies in colour, 



William Marriott. 



THE BOTANICAL DEPARTMENT, NORTHERN 

 INDIA. 



T TP to the year 1874-75, the Botanical Gardens at Saharanpur 

 ^ and the Botanical Officer in charge of them were Imperial, 

 i.e. were under the control of the Supreme Government. In 

 1875, under the scheme of decentralization by which the inde- 

 pendent powers of local Governments were considerably increased, 

 the charge of the Saharanpur (Botanical) Institute became pro- 

 vincial, and passed under the authority of the Lieutenant-Governor 

 of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh. 



In 1887 the subject of reorganizing the Botanical Survey in 

 India was taken up in connection with the memorandum, dated 

 February 10, 1885, by Mr. Thiselton Dyer, Director of the 

 Royal Gardens, Kew, and after consultation with the Govern- 

 ment of the North-Westem Provinces and Oudh and the 

 Superintendents of the Botanical Gardens, Howrah and 

 Saharanpur, the Government of India determined that the 

 most important step which it was desirable to take in order to 

 bring the hitherto unexplored regions of India under botanical 

 survey was to expand the circle, for the botanical investigation 

 of which the Saharanpur Officer was responsible, so as to bring 

 the greater part of Upper India within the sphere of his duties. 

 In order to effect this object it became necessary to restore the 

 Saharanpur Botanist to his former position as an Imperial officer. 

 A further reason for this change was found in the necessity for 

 maintaining, at the disposal of the Government of India, the 

 services of a Botanical Officer with a specially trained staff for 

 the purpose of accompanying expeditions in the neighbourhood 

 of or beyond our north-western frontier. These duties have 

 now been attached to Mr. Duthie, the officer who holds the 

 Saharanpur appointment. 



The transfer took effect from April I, 18S7. But the Gardens, 

 with the assistant, Mr. Gollan, who was brought out in 1879, 

 were not placed under Imperial control, but still remained pro- 

 vincial. The Imperial Botanist is therefore now divorced from 

 the Curatorship of the Gardens, which has passed, under the 

 general control of the Director of the Provincial Department of 

 Agriculture, into the hands of the former assistant. The 

 Botanical Officer retains his occupation of the house and 

 Botanical Museum (with the Herbarium), but has no longer any 

 connection with the practical management of the surrounding 

 gardens. 



The Botanical Officer retains under his control the whole of 

 the native staff connected with the Museum and its Herbarium, 

 as well as the native artist (now drawing Rs. loo a month), who j 

 was trained at the Bombay School of Art specially for the 

 Saharanpur Institution. 



THE NE W SIBERIAN ISLANDS^ 



'T'HE Expedition of MM. Bunge and Toll, who have explored 

 •*■ the lower Yana and the islands of New Siberia during the 

 last two years, was sent out by the Russian Academy of 

 Sciences. Hedenstrom's description of the masses of petrified 

 wood which is found on these islands, and the information 

 gathered from the hunters as to the richness of the archipelago 

 in remains of Quaternary mammals, were the chief induce- 

 ments for sending out the Expedition.'^ The Expedition consisted 

 of Dr. Bunge, who had just terminated his two years' stay at the 

 Sagastyr Polar station at the mouth of the Lena ; Baron Toll ; 

 two Cossacks, four Yakuts, and two Tunguses. After having 

 explored the region at the mouth of the Yana during the summer 

 of 1885,^ and spent the winter at the Kazatchie settlement, 

 twenty miles to the south of Ust-Yansk, the Expedition started 

 in the spring for the New Siberian Islands, and for better 

 exploring them divided into two parties. Dr. Bunge undertook 

 the exploration of the southern islands of the archipelago, and 



' See the Preliminary Report by A. Bunge in the Izvestia of the 

 Russian Geographical Society, vol. xxiii. 1885, 5th fascicule. 



^ See Dr. Schrenck's " Zur Vorgeschichte der von der Akademie ausge- 

 riisteten Expedition," in Beitrdge ztir Kenniiss des Kussischeti Reictis, 3te 

 Folge, 1886. 



3 The account of the explorations in the Yana region has appeared in the 

 Beitrdge zur Kenntniss des Russischen Reichs, 1886. 



especially of the small Lyakhoff Island, while Baron Toll 

 explored the northern islands (Kotelnyi, Thaddeus, and New 

 Siberia), usually called the Anjou Islands. 



Owing to some misunderstanding Dr. Bunge did not find his 

 reindeer on the small Lyakhoff Island, which was his chief 

 station ; and, until June 14, he was compelled to limit his ex- 

 plorations to a few excursions only. He saw large flocks of 

 ducks coming from the north — that is, from what is an open 

 sea on our maps, while several 'species of Lams and Totanus 

 came from the south. As a rule, few birds cross to Little 

 Lyakhoff Island in their migrations ; only geese come by the 

 end of June, and as they moult on the shores of the small lakes 

 and ponds of the island, they are killed in great numbers by the 

 hunters. 



The winter lasts on the Little Lyakhoff Island until the first 

 part of June, and returns again in October. On October 16 

 the frost was already -37° C., but even during the summer 

 10° C. over zero is considered a very hot temperature ; 

 and in July there were thirteen days with snow, fifteen with fog, 

 four with rain, and one snowstorm. 



And yet organic life develops with astonishing rapidity. The 

 first flowers were seen on June li, and Dr. Bunge's collection 

 of phanerogams numbers seventy species ; but all plants are 

 dwarfs, hardly reaching a few inches, while the soil, even in the 

 best situated places, thaws only to the depth of 16 inches. The 

 water of the small ponds is so much warmed by the rays of the 

 sun, that temperatures of from 10° to 16° C. were observed, 

 and therefore worms and Crustacea rapidly develop in the 

 ponds. The insects are few ; even the mosquitoes do not plague 

 men and cattle as they do on the continent ; still, two butter- 

 flies were caught. As to mammals, herds of reindeer come 

 every year from the continent to the islands, but in smaller num- 

 bers than formerly ; they are followed by wolves. The snow 

 fox is very common, but the common fox and hare are exceed- 

 ingly rare visitors to the islands. The Polar bear has become 

 of late very rare, and hunters attribute this to the fact that the 

 ice has remained unbroken for several yeas past. They affirm 

 that the ice around the coasts has not moved since the year 

 when Nordenskiold sailed through in the Vega, and Dr. Bunge 

 doubts whether it will soon be possible to repeat the same 

 journey. 



The chief interest of the island is in its masses of fossil bones 

 buried in the frozen soil. Bones of the mammoth, rhinoceros, 

 Bos inoschiferus, two other species of Bos, several species of 

 Cervtis, very many bones of Equus, and several others, were 

 found, and brought in by Dr. Bunge. The rocks of which the 

 island is built are granite and sedimentary rocks without fossils. 



Baron Toll's expedition was much richer in results. It 

 appears from his surveys that the Kotelnyi Island extends 

 much farther east than is shown on our maps, and that it 

 is connected with Thaddeus Island by a sandy beach. It 

 would be most interesting to know how far this circumstance 

 is due to the upheaval of the islands, which is sure to go on like 

 the upheaval of all the northern coast of Siberia, But the 

 most important discovery is, that the masses of fossil wood 

 which were found on Thaddeus Island proved to be Tertiary, 

 and not Quaternary, as has hitherto been supposed. They belong 

 to layers of Tertiary coal, and fossil Sequoia were found amidst 

 them. We have thus a new proof that the great Tertiary con- 

 tinent which possessed a warm climate, well known from Oswald 

 Heer's description, included not only Greenland, Spitzbergen, 

 and Novaya Zemlya, but also the New Siberian Arcliipelago, more 

 than 90° of longitude to the east of Novaya Zemlya. Geology 

 must explain the existence of this warm climate beyond the 

 75th degree of latitude, at a period so closely preceding that of 

 the glaciation of the northern hemisphere. 



Finally, Baron Toll, after having made rich zoological, 

 botanical, and palseontological collections — Silurian, Devonian, 

 and Triassic deposits being found on the Kotelnyi Island, — 

 reached the northern extremity of the island under the 76th 

 degree of la'itude, and thence he saw the land which was 

 seen eighty years ago by Sannikoff, and has since periodically 

 appeared on, and disappeared from, our maps. It exists, and it 

 is situated nearly a hundred miles (150 versts) due north, off the 

 northern extremity of the Kotelnyi Island. 



If we take into account the facts that there are serious reasons 

 for admitting the existence of a land to the north of Novaya 

 Zemlya,! and that the existence of Sannikoff's Land is now agam 



I See the " Report of the Commission for an Arctic Expedition " in the 

 Izvestia, of the Russian Geographical Society, 1871. 



