and glaciers, but this too sank a moment afterwards all at once to a common ice-border, blackened with earth. In the spring of 1873 Palander and I with nine men made a sledge journey round North-east Land. In the course of this journey a great many bears were seen and killed. When a bear was seen while we were dragging our sledges forward, the train commonly stood still, and, not to frighten the bear, all the men concealed themselves behind the sledges, with the exception of the marksman, who, squatting down in some convenient place, waited till his prey should come sufficiently within range to be killed with certainty. It happened once during foggy weather on the ice at Wahlenberg Bay that the bear that was expected and had been clearly seen by all of us, instead of approaching with his usual supple zigzag movements, and with his ordinary attempts to nose himself to a sure insight into the fitness of the foreigners for food, just as the marksman took aim, spread out gigantic wings and flew away in the form of a small ivory gull. Another time during the same sledge journey we heard from the tent in which we rested the cook, who was employed outside, cry out: "A bear! a great bear! No! a reindeer, a very little reindeer!" The same instant a well-directed shot was fired, and the bear-reindeer was found to be a very small fox, which thus paid with its life for the honour of having for some moments played the part of a big animal. From these accounts it may be seen how difficult navigation among drift-ice must be in unknown waters. On the two occasions on which the vessel was anchored to ice-floes the trawl-net was used, and the hempen tangles. The net was drawn forward slowly with the ice which was drifting to the north-west before a fresh S.E. breeze which was blowing at the time. The yield of the trawling was extraordinarily abundant; large asterids, crinoids, sponges, holothuria, a gigantic sea-spider (Pycnogonid), masses of worms, crustacea, &c. _It was the most abundant yield that the trawl-net at any one time brought up during the whole of our voyage round the coast of Asia_, and this from the sea off the northern extremity of that continent. [Illustration: SEA SPIDER (PYCNOGONID) FROM THE SEA EAST OF CAPE CHELYUSKIN. Half the normal size. ] Among the forms collected here we may specially refer to the large sea-spider, of which a drawing is given (p. 349); and three specimens of small stalked crinoids. The depth varied between 60 and 100 metres. The temperature of the water was at the surface +0 deg. to--0.6 deg.; at the bottom--1.4 deg. to 1.6 deg.; its salinity was considerable, both at the bottom, where it was very nearly equal to that of the other great oceans, and at the surface, where it was indeed about a fifth-part less, but yet much greater than that of the surface-water in the Kara Sea.