THE FUR-SEAL ISLANDS OF ALASKA. 139 



Diverse elegance and services of the cryptogams. — The range and di^'e^se beanties of the numerous 

 mosses and liclieus on these Pribylov islands must serve as an agreeable and interesting study to any one who has 

 the slightest love for nature. They undoubtedly formed the first covering to the naked rocks, after those basaltic 

 foundations had been reared upon and above the bed of the sea — bare and naked clifis and bowlders, which with 

 calm intrepidity presented their callous fronts to the ice-wedging chisels of the Frost King; rain, wind, and thawing 

 moods destroyed their iron-bound strongness; particles larger and finer washed down and away made a surface 

 of soil which slowly became more and more capable of sustaining vegetable life. In this virgin earth, says an old 

 author — 



The wind briugs a small seed, wliich at first generates a diminutive moss, whicli, spreading by degrees, with its tender and minute 

 texture, resists, however, fho most intense cold, and extends over the whole a verdant velvet carpet. In fact, those mosses are the 

 medicines and the nurses of the other inhabitants of the vegetable kingdom [in the North]. The bottom parts of the mosses, which 

 perish and moulder away yearly, mingling with the dissolved but as yet crude parts of the earth, communicate to it org.anized jiarticles, 

 which contribute to the growth and nourishment of other plants; they likewise yield salts and unguinons phlogistic p.articles for the 

 nourishment of future vegetable colonies. The seeds of other plants, which the sea and winds, or else the birds in their plumage, bring 

 from distant shores, and scatter among the mosses. 



Then the botanist needs no prompting when he observes the maternal care of those mosses that screen the 

 tender new arrivals from the cold, and imbue them with the moisture which they have stored up, and — 



Nourish them with their own oily exhalations so that they grow, increase, and at length bear seeds, and afterward dying, add to the 

 unguinous nutritive particles of the earth, and at the same time diffuse over this new earth and mosses more seeds, the earnest of a numerous 

 posterity. 



The following species of algte were collected in 1872-'73, by the author: 



MELANOSPERMJE. 



(All called "Kapoosta"; natives.) 



Fucus vesiculosus. Common ; anchored in large beds. 



Nereocystis Liitkeanus. (" 8ea-otter rafts.") Common. 



Alaria esculenta. Common. This has been used by the Pribylov natives as an article of food relish. 



Chordaria flagelliformis. Common. 



Elachista fucicola. Common. 



RHODOSFEBM.S:. 



Polysiphonia. Eare. 

 Melobesia polymorpha. Common. 

 Melobesia lichenoides. Common. 

 Delesseria. Eare. 

 Peyssonnelia. Common. 

 Collishamnion. Common. 



CHLOROSPERM.ffi:. 



Cladophora uncialis. Common. 



Conferva capillaris. Common ffresh-water lakes and pools). 

 Nostochinea. Common (fresh-water lakes and pools). 

 Ulva latissima. Common. 



The above names do not pretend to specify the entire list that will be found here, but they simply indicate those 

 varieties which are dominant. 



Luxuriance and variety of the sea-weeds. — The extent and luxuriance, variety and beauty of the algte 

 forests of these waters of Bering sea which lave the coasts of the Pribylov group, call for more detail of description 

 than space in this memoir will allow, siuce anything like a fair presentation of the subject would require the 

 reproduction of my water colored drawings. After the heavier gales, especially the southeasters in October, if the 

 naturalist will take the trouble to pace the sand-beach between Lukannon and Northeast point of St. Paul island, 

 he will be rewarded by a memorable sight. He will find thrown up by the surf a vast windrow of kelp along the 

 whole eight or ten miles of this walk, heaped, at some spots, nearly as high as his head; the large trunks of 

 Melanospermw, the small, but brilliant red and crimson fronds of Rhodospenncc interwoven with the emerald gi'ecn 

 leaves of the Chlorospermce. The first-named group is by far the most abundant, and upon its decaying, fermenting 

 brown and ocher heaps, he will see countless numbers of a buccinoid whelk, and a limnaca, feeding as they bore or 

 suck out myriads of tiny holes in the leaf fronds of the strong growing species. 



Sea-anemones and star fishes. — Actinias or sea-anemones occur, together with numerous starfishes ; many 

 jelly-fishes are also interwoven and heaped up with the "kapoo.sta" or sea-cabbages just referred to; also, a 

 quantity of rosy "sea-squirts" and yellow "sea-cucumbers". 



CONFERVOID RUGS AND CARPETS. — Ou the old killiug-fields, on those spots where the sloughing carcasses of 



