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KONGL. SV. VET. AKADEMIENS HANDLINGAR. BAND. 20. N:0 5. 23 
than the other coasts of the Arctic Sea. Here there is found a rich »skargard» and 
the coast is intersected by numerous larger and smaller bays entering into the land in 
different directions. At Spitzbergen the »skargard» is small, and the bays comparatively 
few, being moreover too wide to afford any greater protection against drift-ice. The 
coasts of southern Novaya Zemlya and of Waygats are still worse off in this respect, and 
on all the long Siberian coast, judging from the experience gained during the Vega 
expedition, there is scarcely to be found any place where a larger ship can lie safe from 
the waves and the drift-ice during a sea-wind, except Dickson Harbour and Actinia Bay. 
About half of the American coast on the Arctic Sea appears to be very open. The 
existence of a richer and more vigorous marine vegetation on the west coast of Green- 
land in the litoral zone and the upper part of the sublitoral zone may be, and in my 
opinion ought to be, explained by this coast possessing a large number of isles and bays 
and affording thereby the necessary protection to the alge against the drift-ice. 
The tides. ‘The tides may be considered to contribute indirectly towards impo- 
verishing or annihilating the vegetation on the upper part of the bottom in the greater 
part of the Arctic Sea, because by keeping the ice in continual notion they make it per- 
form incessantly its destructive work, and because larger parts of the bottom can be 
reached and abraded, at certain times, even by more shallow-going ice. Moreover, the 
litoral zone being laid bare at low-water, the vegetation which may possibly be found 
in that region, becomes exposed, at least during certain parts of the year, to conditions 
that must be regarded as unfavourable. This point will be considered below. Even 
in winter the ice which lies along the coasts is not m repose, whatever may be the 
size of the pieces. During the winter stay of the Swedish expedition on the north 
coast of Spitzbergen, the sea off Musselbay was covered by masses of ice, several miles 
broad and apparently hard frozen together. From these a grating sound was heard 
incessantly, caused by the friction exercised by the ice-blocks and ice-floes on one 
another during their ceaseless rising and sinking and their slight progressive and re- 
gressive movements. But in these movements, however insignificant, caused by the 
tidal currents, the ice-masses exercise a continual friction even on the bottom. In 
summer the motion of the ice, produced by the tides, is sometimes very violent, espe- 
cially in narrow sounds and bays. Out of a number of instances, I choose one from 
Novaya Zemlya. In the western part of the strait, Matotshkin Shar, which divides its 
two main islands, there goes, during the ebb, a very violent current from east to west. 
During the stay of the Swedish expedition of 1875, the ice in the interior of the 
strait was breaking up, and the drift-ice, thus formed, rushed westwards during the 
ebb with such a violence, that the little vessel of the expedition was in great danger 
and had to be removed incessantly from one anchorage to another in order to be 
sheltered from the ice. »Once the icemasses, floating vehemently forwards in the strait,» 
says NorDENSKIOLD in his relation of this incident, »were on the very point of tearing 
away our little smack from an anchorage somewhat imprudently chosen and of either 
pressing it up on the dry land or carrying it out into the open sea» '). The rush of 
1) NoRDENSKIOLD, Proven, p. 22. 
