126 POLAR PROBLEMS 



take on many-years-old forms. Thus the greater part of the Arctic 

 Pack consists of heaped-up ice of many years' standing. 



The ice fields of the Arctic Pack are usually bordered on their 

 margins by bulwarks and ridges of hummocks formed by the constant 

 collision with similar floating areas. The interior of these fields is 

 covered with piles [nagromozhdenie] of ice many years old that has 

 been melted and then reconsolidated, sometimes in the shape of former 

 extensive broken-up areas, sometimes in the shape of shattered bul- 

 warks and hummock ridges. Even and smooth surfaces are met with 

 as exceptions on the fields of the Arctic Pack and usually are asso- 

 ciated with the above-mentioned many-years-old formations pro- 

 duced by gradual freezing. In the present work the Arctic Pack is 

 considered only in so far as it influences the ice cover of the Kara and 

 Siberian Seas and the adjacent regions of the Arctic Ocean. 



The Limits of the Kara and Siberian Seas 



The insufficient exploration of these seas does not yet provide 

 the scientific elements to determine their natural physico-geographical 

 limits, and therefore we have to assume quite conventional lines. 

 For the northern limit of the Kara Sea I take a line drawn from Cape 

 Chelyuskin to Cape Zhelanie, the northern extremity of Novaya 

 Zemlya; this line passes north of Lonely Island and the Nordenskiold 

 Archipelago. 



By the term "Siberian Sea" I understand the water area situated 

 to the east of Taimyr Peninsula, bounded on the south by the coast 

 of Siberia and on the north by a conventional line drawn from Cape 

 Chelyuskin to Cape Anisii, the northern extremity of Kotelny Island. 

 The Lyakhov Islands, together with Kotelny Island, define the eastern 

 limits of this basin. As to the water area situated to the east of the 

 New Siberian and Lyakhov Islands, one may accept as its northern 

 conventional limit a line drawn from Cape Kamennyi, the north- 

 eastern extremity of Novaya Sibir Island, to Berry Point or Cape 

 Thomas on Wrangel Island.^ From the point of view of the formation 



1 Relating to the Siberian Sea, certain geographers have accepted the name "Nordenskiold Sea" 

 since Nordenskiold's voyage on the Vega in 1878. It is hard to agree with this name, which some- 

 times appears and then disappears on the maps (on the Russian, British, and American maps it is mostly 

 absent) , as there is no sufficient foundation for it, inasmuch as the first navigation in this sea and the 

 skirting of the coast in the same direction as the Vega sailed were performed in 173s and 1736 by 

 Lieutenant Pronchishchev on the sloop Yakutsk and the second navigation by Lieutenant Khariton 

 Laptev on the same vessel in 1739 and 1740. 



There is no name in geography for the sea to the east of the Lyakhov and New Siberian Islands, 

 and this forces one to give it a separate name. I call it " Yukagir Sea, " to commemorate a tribe which, 

 according to tradition, was once very numerous on the shores of this sea and which migrated to some 

 conjectured lands situated to the north of it. 



[According to recent Russian official usage the sea between Taimyr Peninsula and the New Sibe- 

 rian Islands is termed Laptev Sea (strictly. Sea of the Brothers Laptev), and the sea between the New 

 Siberian Islands and Bering Strait is termed East Siberian Sea (Kratkiya svyedyeniya po meteorologii 

 i okeanografii Karskago i Sibirskago Morei, i.e. Succinct information on the meteorology and ocean- 



