Chap. VII] COLD TEMPERATE FOREST FORMATIONS 581 



The stunted character of the Siberian forest is emphasized by Midden- 

 dorff J : 



' Repeatedly here have I been obliged to admit my great disappointment, when, 

 leaving the beaten tracts of Siberia, I went to confront virgin forests, the sight of 

 which, I hoped, would allay in me the longing after the stirring impression aroused 

 by the vision that ever imprints itself upon our imaginations when we ponder over the 

 mighty products of hundreds, aye of thousands of vanished years ; when we think 

 of the monarchs of the primeval forest, sound to the core, and, undismayed, shaking 

 from their hoary heads the blows showered upon them by wind and weather.' 



After a glance at the luxuriant tall-stemmed forests that grow in North-West 

 America in the same latitude as Yeniseisk (58 N.), and at the high-forests of Central 

 Europe, he continues : 



' As the first account sent to the Academy of my travels bears witness, I was bit- 

 terly disappointed. Northwards from Yeniseisk, from measurements made by the 

 eye in Livland, we should estimate the general age of the forests at hardly more than 

 half a century, never at a full century. This apparently youthful physiognomy of the 

 forests even increases the further we travel northward, until we have occasion to look 

 into them more closely, when the long tresses of dark grey mosses and lichens 

 clothing them betray the fact that, for a long time, we have had to do with dwarfed 

 veterans of the tree-world. A few sturdy, large trunks that I met with to the south of 

 Yeniseisk only served to render it more evident to me, how inimical to tree-growth 

 is the harsh, inconstant climate of Siberia, even before reaching the 60th degree. . . . 



' The thickest tree that I saw in South Siberia was a poplar, 6 feet in diameter. 

 Next to it in thickness among the Siberian trees came larch (about 4| feet), then 

 pines, and then the Siberian silver-firs. That these trees, the largest of their allies, 

 were to be regarded as exceptions to the usual duration of life, and as sages a thou- 

 sand years in age, was shown by their rarity, as at least 99 per cent, of all apparently 

 full-grown trees in the forest were not more than 1-1^ feet thick, even in favourable 

 localities of South-East Siberia. After I had become so completely undeceived in the 

 Yeniseisk Valley north of 6o c latitude, regarding the growth of trees, I placed all my 

 hopes on South-East Siberia. I fared no better there, and find my diary full of 

 laments to that effect.' 



Like the northern forest belt of North America, that of Siberia is 

 continued southward in the form of separate extensions, whilst the rest of 

 Central Asia, like Central North America, is occupied by steppes and 

 deserts. One of these extensions embraces the northern Chinese plateau 

 from the Altai Mountains to Lake Baikal ; another, much intersected by 

 steppes, extends over the south-eastern corner of Siberia and over North- 

 Eastern China ; a third covers Kamchatka ; and a fourth stretches south- 

 wards from the island of Saghalin towards Japan, where on Yezo and the 

 north of Nippon tropophilous summer- forest, but in the south of Nippon 

 temperate rain-forest, prevails. 



1 Middendorff, op. cit., p. 630. 



