SCIENCE. 



475 



turous spirits who may attempt the exploration of 

 the St. Elias alps and glaciers. 



The last advices from the whaling-fleet announce 

 the taking of a hundred and seventeen whales, which 

 is an unusually successful catch. The steam-whaler 

 Bowhead was crushed in the ice, hut without loss of 

 life. The party who intended to winter at Point Bar- 

 row, in the signal-station buildings, are reported to 

 have reached their destination after several mishaps. 



Brown bears have been unusually numerous and 

 fierce on the Aliaska peninsula this summer, and 

 several salmon-fishers have been attacked : one is 

 reported killed. 



Several new canneries have been established, one 

 on Bristol Bay, where four hundred cases of canned 

 and thirty-two hundred and fifty barrels of salted 

 salmon were put up during the season. 



At Kadiak the summer had been calm and fine, 

 and the hay-crop a success. At the end of the sea- 

 son several severe gales had occurred. Twenty-one 

 thousand cases of canned salmon had been put up by 

 the two canneries on Kadiak Island. 



Two Moravian missionaries entered the Kuskok- 

 wim region, and were expecting to winter there 

 among the Innuit tribes. They found their knowl- 

 edge of the Innuit tongue, gained in Labrador, 

 of much assistance. Letters from them are being 

 printed in the Moravian, and contain details of in- 

 terest. 



The vacancy in the church at Unalashka, caused 

 by the recent death of the Kev. Innocentius Shayesh- 

 nikoff, has been filled by the transfer of the Greek 

 clergyman at Kadiak to the more western post. 

 Shayeshnikoff was well known to the traders and 

 explorers who have visited the port of Unalashka 

 during the last fifteen years. He was a native Aleut, 

 trained in the colonial seminary, and, for his opportu- 

 nities, a remarkably well-informed and intelligent 

 man. A pupil of Veniaminoff, he partook of the 

 scientific tastes of his preceptor, was always ready to 

 lend assistance to the explorer, recorded the weather 

 and temperature for many years, and was never hap- 

 pier than when he recounted to some interested lis- 

 tener his observations of natural phenomena, or of 

 the anthropological features of his native region. He 

 will long be regretted, not only by the passing visitor, 

 but by his parishioners, to whom he most faithfully 

 ministered. 



The Dominion government, during the past season, 

 has had an explorer investigating the capabilities of 

 the Queen Charlotte Islands for settlement or other 

 purposes. We extract the following notes from his 

 report : — 



There are about eighty islands in the group, three 

 of which are of considerable size, the largest having 

 a length of seventy and an extreme width of fifty 

 miles. It is pierced by several remarkable and 

 widely ramifying inlets. Along the western border 

 of the group runs a range of high mountains, whose 

 chief peaks reach four thousand or forty-five hun- 

 dred feet above the sea, often within a few miles of 

 the sea. The land gradually falls in a series of wave- 

 like hills and rugged valleys toward the north-east, 



where the largest area of level land occurs. There 

 are about fifty thousand acres of grazing-land on the 

 islands, and a good deal of timber, the best of which 

 is on the shores of Massett Inlet. Many trees were 

 found which measured from thirty to thirty-five feet 

 in circumference. The wood is chiefly spruce (Abies) 

 and yellow Alaskan cedar (Chamaecyparis). The tem- 

 perature was very even, in midsummer ranging from 

 50° and 60° in the early morning, to about 70° F. at 

 noon. The rainfall is estimated at from fifty to sev- 

 enty inches per annum. The snowfall on the coast is 

 not heavy, and remains only a week or ten days on 

 the ground. There are about eight hundred Indians 

 of the Haida nation on the group, who were friendly, 

 and do a brisk business in fish-oil and fish. A fish 

 locally known as the 'black cod,' but which is more 

 like a sea-bass, is extremely numerous: thirty of 

 them will yield a gallon of oil. There are many 

 halibut-banks. Bituminous coal exists, and there is 

 a local deposit of anthracite well known to geolo- 

 gists. Little is known of other minerals. A sub- 

 merged forest was found, off the coast of Graham 

 Island, covering over fifty acres. Many of the trees 

 were petrified, or converted into lignite. The coast 

 is but little known. Dr. George M. Dawson added 

 greatly to our knowledge of it, in an exploration 

 made a few years since for the Dominion geological 

 survey. In one bay a series of six or eight cataracts 

 was observed, having a combined fall of nearly fif- 

 teen hundred feet. Game and wild fowl were tame 

 and very abundant. 



THE FLORA OF THE HIGH ALPS. 



A recent paper on the nival flora of Switzerland, 

 by the late Professor Oswald Heer, shows that 337 

 species of flowering plants are found in Switzerland 

 between 8,000 and 13,000 feet above the sea. All 

 these species are found between 8,000 and 8,500 feet, 

 probably one-fourth having their greatest distribution 

 above 8,000 feet; while twelve were obtained above 

 12,000 feet. One tenth comprises species belonging 

 to the lowlands, and nine tenths are mountain plants, 

 the majority belonging to the Alpine region proper. 

 Monte Kosa contains the richest nival flora, although 

 most of the species are distributed through the whole 

 Alpine region. 



About half of these plants originated in the arctic 

 zone, and apparently came in glacial times from 

 Scandinavia. This arctic flora evidently had its ori- 

 gin on the mountains of the arctic zone, and in mio- 

 cene times bore the same relation to the flora of the 

 arctic valleys as the present Alpine flora does to the 

 flora of the lowlands of Switzerland. The miocene 

 arctic flora advanced toward Europe as far back as in 

 tertiary times, and in this way the tertiary flora of 

 Europe came into possession of types which now 

 characterize the temperate zone; for instance, the 

 pines and deciduous trees. They gradually gained 

 upon the tropical and subtropical forms, the primitive 

 inhabitants of these regions, and became the parent- 

 plants of a part of the present flora of the lowlands. 



