KONGL. SV. VET. AKADEMIENS HANDLINGAR. BAND. 20. N:0 5. 7 



clothed with algfe, are without vegetation, and on those portions of the bottom, where 

 the vegetation is at its densest, it is nevertheless largely inferior in point of individuals 

 to siich parts of the Atlantic as are rich in algaj. I think tliat this stateinent may be 

 extended even to the Greenland and Spitzbergen Seas, along the east coast of Green- 

 land and the coasts of Spitzbergen, Beeren Eiland and northern Novaya Zemlya. It 

 probably holds good even with respect to the American Arctic Sea, whose algology is 

 as yet only very incompletely known. In the Kära Sea, judging by tlie few observations 

 hitherto made, the character of the Flora is another at Novaya Zemlya than on the 

 coast of Siberia. If the vegetation along the rest of the east coast of Novaya Zemlya 

 resembles in its general features that of Uddebay, the only point on this coast where 

 it has as yet been made the object of a closer investigation, the Flora of the western 

 part of the Kära Sea is most closely allied, with respect to the number of individuals, 

 to that of the eastern part of the Murman Sea. 



Of the whole Arctic Sea, the region along the north coast of Siberia, i. e. the eastern 

 part of the Kära Sea and the Siberian Sea, has the poorest Flora with regard to number 

 of individuals. From the observations hitherto made, it must be considered extremely 

 poor. There is probably no other region of the sea to be found of the same extent 

 with this, whose vegetation presents such a character of poverty and indigence. As is 

 shown by the table and map published by Stuxberg of the dredgings in the Kära Sea 

 and the Siberian Sea made during the Swedish expeditions in 1875, 1876, and 1878, 

 researches have been carried on with the best dredging apparatus of modern time at a 

 considerable number of places along the whole coast of Northern Siberia and generally at 

 such a depth and such a distance from the shore, that in other seas and even in other parts 

 of the Arctic Sea a bottom rich in algas would quite certainly have been struck very often. 

 However, the data given, which are based on my own notes, show that in the eastern 

 part of the Kära Sea and in the Siberian Sea algie have been dredged only in 10 

 places. Only in four of these, viz. at Cape Palander and in Actinia Bay within the 

 Kära Sea, and at Irkaypi and the region about the mouth of Kolyutshin-fjord within 

 the Siberian Sea, algas were found in any notable nurabers. The Flora of the last- 

 mentioned locality may possibly be compared, in point of number of individuals, to 

 that of poorer portions of the Murman Sea and the Greenland Sea; at the other three 

 places the träets clothed with algaä were of little extent and the number of individuals 

 was small. With resjard to the vegetation of the six remaining localities I have noted 

 the foUowing facts, which seem to me worthy of being specially mentioned. 



1. Lat. N. 74° 52' Long. E. 85° 8'. Kjellman's Islands. 



Bottom: flat rocks and boulders of granite and gneiss. 

 Veget.: scanty litoral vegetation of Urospora penicilliforvns. 



2. Lat. N. 76° 8' Long. E. 90° 25'. 



Depth: 16 fathoms. Bottom: stones and shingle. 



Veget.: Lithothamniom fcecundum, scarce. Phyllophora interrupta, extremely small 

 and scarce. Lithoderma fatiscens, rather abundant. 



