IV.] 
THE KARA SEA. 
185 
rises gradually and then forms a plain lying 30 to 90 metres 
below the surface of the sea, nearly as level as the surface of 
the superincumbent water. The bottom of the sea in the south 
and west parts of it consists of clay, in the regions of Beli 
Ostrov of sand, farther north of gravel. Shells of Crustacea and 
pebbles are here often surrounded by bog-ore formations, 
resembling the figures on page 186. These also occur over an 
extensive area north-east of Port Dickson in such quantity that 
they might be used for the manufacture of iron, if the region 
were less inaccessible. 
Even in the shallower parts of the Kara Sea the water at 
the bottom is nearly as salt as in the Atlantic Ocean, and all 
the year round cooled to a temperature of —2° to — 2°'7. The 
surface-water, on the contrary, is very variable in its composition, 
sometimes at certain places almost drinkable, and in summer 
often strongly heated. The remarkable circumstance takes 
place here that the surface water in consequence of its limited 
salinity freezes to ice if it be exposed to the temperature which 
prevails in the salt stratum of water next the bottom, and that 
it forms a deadly poison for many of the decapoda, worms, 
mussels, Crustacea and asterids which crawl in myriads among 
the beds of clay or sand at the bottom. 
At many places the loose nature of the bottom does not 
permit the existence of any algae, but in the neighbourhood of 
Beli Ostrov, Johannesen discovered extensive banks covered 
with ‘‘sea-grass” (algae), and from the east coast of Novaya 
Zemlya Dr. Kjellman in 1875 collected no small number of 
algae, ^ being thereby enabled to take exception to the old 
erroneous statements as to the nature of the marine flora. 
He has drawn up for this work a full account of the 
1 Already in 1771 one of Pallas’ companions, the student Sujeif, found 
large algae in the Kara Sea (Pallas, Reise. St. Petersburg, 1771—1776, 
iii. p. 34). 
