20 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



in dry weather as tinder. According to the findings of a government 

 commission appointed a few years ago to investigate the subject, the 

 losses to the nation by fire amounted to the total destruction of rural 

 Eussia once in fifteen years.. The report was the incentive for a vigor- 

 ous campaign against the thatched roof, with the result that in many 

 villages one can now see the new roofs of wood or metal side by side 

 with the thatched. They are less picturesque but manifestly better, and 

 the change is going on rapidly. 



The villages are usually unattractive. Where possible, they are built 

 on low ground, probably as a protection against the cold. The streets 

 and alleys are not paved and in rainy weather they are deep with mud 

 which makes them not only impassable, but owing to the lack of sanitary 

 precautions, a breeding place for disease, especially for typhoid and 

 diphtheria. The death rate is of course appalling. Indeed the ques- 

 tion of public health is sadly neglected. In 1909 there was only one 

 doctor for every 11,000 people in the Empire. In the villages of some 

 pretension, one is apt to find a house a little better than the rest that 

 serves as the inn, hard by is the store where necessities are sold and at 

 the end of the village street, or not infrequently back of the individual 

 cottages, is the bathhouse in which the villagers bathe or steam them- 

 selves at least once a week. 



The building of the village that one would like to find, and rarely 

 does, is the village school, which is so conspicuous in the rural landscape 

 of America and western Europe. Up to the present the Eussian seems 

 to have expended his energy in building churches instead of schools. 

 Wherever you go in the land of the Tsars, the existence of an all power- 

 ful dominating church is manifest. The sky line of the great cities is 

 dotted with the brightly gilded domes of cathedrals and monasteries, 

 wliile the country landscape is likewise enriched and enlivened by the 

 presence of the white sobor of the region. Similarly one encounters 

 in the streets of every large city innumerable shrines. The mass of 

 the population still makes the sign of the cross and utters a prayer 

 when passing a church or shrine. In the hut of the peasant as in the 

 palace of the rich, and on every vessel flying the Eussian flag, the 

 holy ikon above the little burning lamp with floating wick is always 

 found. 



The Eussian church ever since the days of Peter the Great has 

 been a state institution. Its clergy are the servants of the state, and it 

 is therefore very closely identified with the government in its adminis- 

 tration and policy. The clergy is sharply divided into two groups, the 

 black and the white or grey. The former are monks ; they do not marry 

 and from their ranks come the higher clergy. While in the monasteries 

 they occupy themselves with the complexities of the Slavonic liturgy 

 and service, works of charity, painting of ikons, etc., the demand being 



