Biological Succession in Aleutians — Bank 
slopes of Great Sitkin Island (Fig. 1). We 
visited the place on two occasions 12 months 
apart. It was noted in 1950 that during the 
preceding year a considerable extent of newly 
ice-free area had been successfully invaded by 
a number of plants, mostly mosses and lichens 
but also including Luzula arcuata, Agrostis 
exarata, Hieracium triste, Carex circinata^ and 
Sibhaldia procumhens. Although the actual 
creep of vegetation was in most cases only 
a few feet, this was all along the margin of 
the newly exposed ash, a sizeable area, and 
seems remarkable for having occurred during 
a single growing season. 
Contrasting with this is the inability of 
Picea to establish itself on Aleutian soil, de- 
spite the fact that extensive spruce forests 
occur on the mainlands of Alaska and Kam- 
chatka at the same latitudes. On Amaknak 
Island in Unalaska Bay in 1805 Russian set- 
tlers planted 24 seedlings of Pkea sitchensis 
which came from Sitka (Hulten, 1937^). 
Other Sitka spruces were later planted on 
Expedition Isle in Roose Bay and in Unalaska 
Village. All these groves have been depleted 
by dying trees, but parts of the original plants 
are still alive, and, except for the stunted ap- 
pearance and gnarled form of some of the 
trees, they seem healthy. Many regularly pro- 
duce cones. However, none has successfully 
reproduced by seedlings. More recently, at 
Adak, several dozen Sitka spruces were planted 
on a hill and on a lowland. These plantings 
are failures; the trees that have survived are 
stunted, and there has been no reproduction. 
Such lack of success on the part of the 
spruce in taking hold in the Aleutians has 
been attributed to various causes, among 
which the acid soil conditions, high winds, 
and constant fog are most often given. None 
of these answers satisfactorily explains the 
real reasons why the trees fail to grow in the 
Aleutians, however. The so-called extreme 
acidity of Aleutian soils is probably a mis- 
conception (Kellogg and Nygard (1951) have 
found that soil pW in the Aleutians is about 
the same as that on Kodiak where there are 
501 
spruce forests), many of the planted groves 
are fairly well sheltered from the winds, and 
it is difficult to see how fog could prohibit 
tree growth entirely, I can only guess at the 
true reasons, as the proper studies have not 
been made. It is suggested that the primary 
ecological factor operating against spruce re- 
generation is the absence of any prolonged 
summer period of uniformly high enough 
temperatures to allow maturation of seed. 
CULTURAL SUCCESSION 
Turning from a discussion of the effects of 
Aleutian environment upon biological suc- 
cession to a brief consideration of the ways 
in which human culture has been conditioned 
by the same environment, we find that the 
Aleut was confined to a rather restricted range 
of cultural adaptations, which depended upon 
the sea and the shore. The Aleut seldom 
visited the inland regions of his islands, partly 
because topography and weather factors in 
those parts made such journeys a hardship, 
but mainly because the majority of his needs 
were found only on the shore, in the lowland 
meadows, valleys, and marshes near the sea, 
or in the sea (Bank, 1952). Of more than 50 
local plants which the Aleut gathered for food, 
drink, medicines, and for use in the manu- 
facture of such articles as grass mats, baskets, 
bidarki (kyak) frames, etc., almost all occurred 
along the margins of the islands. The Aleut 
depended upon fish, sea mammals, shell fish, 
and birds for food, and these also came from 
the sea or near the shore. Thus, even if Aleut 
culture had not been predominately maritime 
prior to its arrival in the Aleutians, it certainly 
was unable to be anything else after the Aleut 
took up his habitation in the Archipelago. 
Recent archaeological studies (Jochelson, 
1925; Laughlin, 1951) have shown that Aleut 
culture changed only slightly during 3,000 
years of occupation in the islands before the 
coming of the white man. 
Early Russian accounts (Jochelson, 1925: 
23) suggest that Aleut villages were on ex- 
posed points of land and isthmuses prior to 
