itions,
currents and depth of water in different parts of the sea are
ascertained, and we know that the old ideas of its poverty in
animals and plants are quite erroneous.

[Illustration: UMBELLULA FROM THE KARA SEA.
A. Polype stem entire, one-half the natural size.
B. Polype stem, upper part, one-and-a-half times the natural size. ]

In respect to depth the Kara Sea is distinguished by a special
regularity, and by the absence of sudden changes. Along the east
coast of Novaya Zemlya and Vaygats Island there runs a channel, up
to 500 metres in depth, filled with cold salt-water, which forms the
haunt of a fauna rich not only in individuals, but also in a large
number of remarkable and rare types, as Umbellula, Elpidia, Alecto,
asterids of many kinds, &c. Towards the east the sea-bottom 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 deg. to -2.7 deg.. 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[92], being thereby enabled
to take exception to the