TENUEE AND USE OF LAND. ] Q)^ 



everywhere the same. They consist of a broad triangular ploughshare (more often made in 

 two parts) whose left angle is bent forward and plays the part of the weh, a w^ooden mould- 

 hoard, a lifting screw or a system of wedges regulating the depth of ploughing. The work of 

 this plough has no resemblance to that of the Great Russia plough (s o k h a) but is very 

 like that of the p 1 u g. The depth ploughed may he carried to four and even six vershoks, 

 the breadth of the clod being also six vershoks. The latter is cut off very cleanly and a 

 field ploughed by aSiberiansokhahardly differs in appearance from one ploughed by a plug. In 

 the regions where agriculture is most developed the sokha is fastened to a two-wheeled car- 

 riage and furnished with two or three horses. In localities lying near to the northern 

 limit of agriculture, the shafts are fastened directly to the mouldboard and the plough is 

 harnessed to one horse. The harrows used in Siberia belong to the half-heavy type. Thy consist 

 of a wooden frame with iron teeth, in number from 16 to 20. In the purely agricultural zone 

 of Siberia, the average farmer harrows with three harrows, while the rich farmers send one 

 after another up to six. In the north, where the strips are not large, usually one harrow is 

 used, but they here have very many more teeth. The other implements, sickles, scythes, 

 both simple and with fingers (cradles), flails for thrashing, shovels for winnowing, present no 

 differences from those employed in European Russia. Until lately there were no machines in 

 Siberia. Recently small hand winnowers of the Grant system have been largely adopted in the 

 Altai and in localities lying to the east of Tomsk, and horse thrashing-machines have begun 

 to appear among the rich peasants. 



The chief object that the Siberian peasant places before himself in preparing the 

 land for sowing is the struggle with weeds, which with the freshness of the soils and their 

 richness in organic substances grow up in great abundance and are one of the worst enemies 

 of grain crops. Another problem, the bringing of the soil into the I'equisite condition of fria- 

 bleness, in the mind of the Siberian peasant, yields to that of destroying the weeds. The 

 degree of their abundance mainly determines in each case the greater or less extent of 

 ploughing and harrowing, the time for these processes and for sowing and a mass of other 

 less essential details. 



The normal type of .the cultivation of fallow in Siberia is twice ploughing, with har- 

 rowing after the first. All these operations are carried out in the interval of time between 

 the beginning of June and the end of July. An additional third ploughing is added in the 

 case of many weeds or heavy soil, especially if the later has been washed with snow water 

 and threatens to become covered with an impenatrable hard crust. Upon such heavy, clay 

 soils the third ploughing of the fallow is effected in spring, upon friable soils in late autumn. 

 Stubble fields are ploughed once only, usually in spring, and only rarely on very crumbly 

 soils in autumn. Before ploughing the remaining stubble is burnt and the ash serves in some 

 sort as a manure. The sowing of winter grain begins from the very last days of July and 

 where possible is concluded in the middle of August, although in the case of poor men it 

 not seldom drags on to the beginning of September. The spring grains in the southern local- 

 ities of agricultural Siberia are begun to be sown at the end of April, in the northern re- 

 gions, in the beginning of May, wheat being sown earliest of all, and latest oats and espec- 

 ially barley. The time of sowing has on account of the Siberian climatic conditions a vt>ry 



