ears to be snow-sludge drenched with salt water
cooled considerably under 0 deg. C. First when the temperature sinks below
-10 deg. does the power of this small animal to emit light appear to cease.
But as the element in which they live, the surface of the snow nearest
the beach, is in the course of the winter innumerable times cooled
twenty degrees more, it appears improbable that these minute animals
suffer any harm by being exposed to a cold of from -20 deg. to -30 deg., a very
remarkable circumstance, as they certainly do not possess in their
organism any means of raising the internal animal heat in any noteworthy
degree above the temperature of the surrounding medium.

We did not see these animals at Pitlekaj, but a similar phenomenon,
though on a smaller scale, was observed by Lieut. BELLOT[267] during
a sledge-journey in Polar America. He believed that the light arose
from decaying organic matter.

[Illustration: REITINACKA. (After a photograph by L. Palander.) ]

After the Chukches had told us that an exceedingly delicious black
fish was to be found in the fresh-water lagoon at Yinretlen, which
is wholly shut off from the sea and in winter freezes to the bottom,
we made an excursion thither on the 8th July. Our friends at the
encampment were immediately ready to help us, especially the women,
Artanga, and the twelve-year-old, somewhat spoiled _Vega_-favourite
Reitinacka. They ran hither and thither like light-hearted and
playful children, to put the net in order and procure all that was
needed for the fishing. We had carried with us from the vessel a net
nine metres long and one deep. Along its upper border floats were
fixed, to the lower was bound a long pole, to which were fastened
five sticks, by which the pole was sunk to the bottom of the lagoon,
a little way from the shore. Some natives wading in the cold water
then pushed the net towards the land with sticks and the pole, which
glided easily forward over the bottom of the lake, overgrown as it
was with grass. In order to keep the fish from swimming away, the
women waded at the sides of the net with their _pesks_ much tucked
up, screaming and making noise, and now and then standing in order
to indicate by a violent shaking that the water was very cold. The
catch was abundant. We caught by hundreds a sort of fish altogether
new to us, of a type which we should rather have expected to find in
the marshes of the Equatorial regions than up here in the north.