GEOGRAPHICAL REVIE\V. 33 



the town population is low enough compared with the same proportion in Western Europe and 

 America. In European Russia the proportion of the inhahitants of the towns to the total 

 population is 13 per cent, in Western Siheria, less than eight per cent. 



Of the towns of any importance in Western Siberia possessing at the same time a really 

 urban character, there are only seven: Tomsk, with a population of about 40,000; Tobolsk, 

 with 20,000 inhabitants; Barnaoul and Biisk each with 17,000; Tiumen, with 14,000; Mariinsk 

 and Kolyvan, each with 13,000 inhabitants. 



In immediate connection with the density, distribution and manner of hfe of the popula- 

 tion is the distribution and apportionment of the domestic animals, of which the nearest to 

 man, at any rate in country life, is the horse, serving as it does not only for field work but 

 for travelling from place to place and for the conveyance of goods. The population of Western 

 Siberia, occupying as it does a vast and thinly inhabited territory, upon which agiiculture, 

 working a virgin soil without steam motors, leaving extensive wastes covered with a luxu- 

 riant herbaceous vegetation, has a particular need for tlie horse and is in a position to feed 

 it from the abundance of fodder. Therefore, while in the thickly populated and most highly 

 industrial countries of Europe like, for example, Belgium and Great Britain, the proportion 

 of horses per 100 inhabitants hardly exceeds the figure five; in the inore agricultural 

 countries of France and Germany, does not surpass eight; in those still very rich in 

 natural meadows and pastures, such as Hungary and Denmark, it reaches twelve and seventeen, 

 and in European Russia and the United States of America, twenty-two; in Western Siberia 

 the number of horses per 100 inhabitants reaches sixty-three, the absolute number being 

 1,700,000, in other words, to each man of working age there are two to three horses. 



Under such circumstances, as might be inferred, the number (»f the other domestic 

 animals is also proportionately very high. To every 100 inhaliitants in Western Siberia there 

 are fifty-two head of horned cattle, the absolute number being 1,400,000, that is, from two 

 to three head per mairied couple. Finally there are eighty-five sheep and goats per 100 in- 

 habitants, the absolute number being 2,300,000. The northern reindeer is the domestic animal 

 of the polar tribes, inhabiting the polar tundra zone which might in Western Siberia be called 

 the region of reindeer breeding. The absolute number of these animals in Western Siberia 

 extends to 240,000 head. As the population employed in rearing reindeer in the polar tundra 

 zone and in the northern part of the forest zone, Samoyeds and a portion of the Ostiaks, does 

 not exceed 40,000, it follows that there arc 600 reindeer to every 100 inhaliiiauis: and as 

 long as such a proportion per man of domestic animals in the far north can be maintained, 

 so long the polar tribes of Western Siberia will not exhibit any tendency to become extin- 

 'guished. 



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