THE USSURl-LITTOKAL TRACT. g 9 



are known which have been found nowhere except in Ussuria. Among them is the celebrated 

 ginseng (panax ginseng Reg.), whose root is so prized as a remedy by the Chinese. Prob- 

 ably many of these plants will be subsequently found in the Amour Country also, but some 

 of them bear undoubtedly a more southern character. To the latter are to be referred, from 

 the pea family, the beautiful climbing glycine ussuriensis Reg., of the exotic family ponte- 

 deriaceae, the very showy marsh plant (monochoria Korsakavii Reg.); of the family of erio- 

 caulaceae, eriocanlon ussuriense; finally, of the ferns, with a subtropical appearance, pleopeltis 

 ussuriensis Reg. The flora of the LTssuri country has many forms common to Xorth America; 

 25 per cent of the whole Ussuri flora is met with in North America, but of course the ma- 

 jority of these species belong to those equally existent over the whole northern zone alike 

 of the Old and the New World, and only 32 species, entirely foreign to European Russia, 

 cross from America, 14 through the Yakutsk region and 18 direct. 



Almost the same may be said in reference to the invertebrate fauna, and especially of 

 the insects, as to the flora. The majority of the species here are met with also in the Amour 

 country, while the proportion of peculiar forms is very high, but approaching the Sea of Japan 

 on the one hand a few forms appear not found in the Amour Country and bearing a subtrop- 

 ical character, and on the other, the proportion increases of purely European species or their 

 analogues, a fact particularly noticeable in those orders of insects possessing a highly developeil 

 power of flight, as for example the butterflies and moths (lepidoptera). On the whole, both 

 the flora and the fauna of the Ussuri country as also of the whole Amour-Littoral region 

 bears a completely palearctic character, that is, the character of the northei'u zone of the 

 Old World, here reaching right as far as the Eastern Ocean, while in the more southern zone 

 the palearctic fauna crossing the whole tableland of Central Asia and Tibet together finds 

 its limit in a more western meridian upon the frontier of the warm subtropical plains of 

 China, falling far short of the Eastern Ocean. 



The vertebrate animals of the Ussuri-Littoral country are the same as those in 

 Amouria ; only one species of deer (cervus axis), a few small rodents, and fish in the Sea of 

 Japan appearing in its bays like the herrings and pilchards in countless numbers at certain 

 seasons of the year, constitute the difference between the fauna of the Ussuri-Littoral region 

 and that of the Amour. 



The population of the Ussuri-Littoral region together with the island of Sakhalin at 

 present already amounts to 90,000 souls. Li this number are only 6,500 wandering aborigones 

 of the country belonging to the Tunguz tribes of Manguns, Golds, Oroks, and also to the Ghil- 

 iaks. There are 13,000 Coreans with fixed abodes, and 8,000 Chinese. The Russian immi- 

 grants amount to more than 60,000, or 67 per cent, so that contrary of the Yakutsk re- 

 gion, the Ussuri-Littoral, Amour and Transbaikal districts may be considered completely 

 Russian. In the towns of the Ussuri-Littoral country live about 18 per cent of its 

 population, and only one of these towns, Vladivostok, with 13,(X)0 in hahiiants. has the char- 

 acter of a true town population. It is not then astonishing that in the Ussuri-Littoral country the 

 rural predominate over the town industries, a fact appearing in the number of domestic animals 

 reared by the population, although this figure is lower than in Transbaicalia and Amouria 

 on account of the recent settlement of the 0(unitrv. Thus, there are about 4j horses in tiie 



