86 SIUEUIA. 



CHAPTEK VII. 

 Tenure and use of land. 



The foundations of land teniiio and the forms of land usufruct; the dividing of Siberia 

 into districts and their general character: the northern borderland, the transition zone, the 

 agricultural region, the steppe districts, the Amour tract; agriculture; sketch of the conditions 

 of the soil, systems of field culture and rotation of crops; tillage and cost of production of 

 breadstulfs; proportion of seed for different crops; sale of grain and grain prices; agriculture 

 in the steppes and the Amour tract; raising of cattle among the peasants, its extent and 

 importance; kinds of animals, diseases; live stock industry among the Kirghiz. 



THE whole of Siberia, alike that which is completely uninhabited and that which is 

 settled by peasants of Russian origin or by the aborigines of the country, natives 

 belonging to various tribes and classes, is reckoned as crown land. Exceptions to the general 

 rule are, first of all, the southern part of the Tomsk government which forms under the name 

 of the Altai mining district the property of His Majesty's Cabinet, and next a series of 

 small parcels granted and sold in the fifties to various private persons, the lands of the monaster- 

 ies, of the town communes, et cetera. But all forms of private land holdings are completely lost in 

 the vast mass of Crown lands, both on account of their insignificant extent, and as regards 

 their economical importance. Private owners have nowhere started regular management of 

 their property; some exploit their estates by means of leasing their land to the peasants, and 

 others have utterly neglected them, drawing from them no revenue whatever. 



In Western Siberia the sale of lands to private persons continued until recent years 

 when, with the abolition of the west Siberian Governor-Generalship, an Imperial order was 

 given to discontinue the sale of Crown lands. Private owners in Western Siberia do not 

 possess more than 300,000 dessiatines, exlusive of course of the Cabinet lands. 



A very considerable portion of the lands belonging to the Crown and to the Cabinet, 

 almost exclusively forests or regions not adapted to cultivation, is under the immediate 

 control and disposition of the Government and the Cabinet which, where there is a possibility 

 of so doing, draw an income from them by felling the timber and leasing the meadows and 

 pastures, fishing rights et cetera. Another part, enormous in extent but insignificant in 

 respect to the number of inhabitants living thereon, and its capacity for cultivation, namely, 



