TENURE AND USE OF LAND. 107 



This is, be it remembered, true only as regards spring crops. The yields of winter rye in 

 places suited to it never fall to zero; a complete failure only occurs on separate strips, 

 and therefore bad harvests in the forest rye region, lying to the east of Tomsk, never place 

 the population in such a difficult position, as in the region of spring crops, and particularly 

 in the wheat steppes. Here occur complete failures, and very bad harvests not unfrequently 

 follow each other three and four years running. 



The chief causes of the failure of the crops in these steppe localities are drought and the 

 k byl ka, an insect belonging to the order of orthoptera, similar to the locust and applied to several 

 species of grasshopper. In forest localities these causes yield place to the baneful conse- 

 quences of unfavourable winters, which react destructively upon the winter crops, but these 

 circumstances never here attain such a character as the droughts in the steppe localities. 

 Not less essential causes of crop failures, operating equally in the forests and steppes, are 

 the spring frosts and autumn hoar frosts, of which the former damage the sprouting grain 

 the latter injure It when filling. According to the soil, situation and time of sowing, the hoar 

 frosts and frosts sometimes destroy the grain without leaving anything, sometimes destroy or 

 spoil only part of the crop. The influence of frosts is different in different localities. In some 

 they injure the crops once in several years, in others, much more frequently. There are even 

 spots, as to the north-east of Tomsk, where the spring crops freeze every year. Oats in such 

 places are sown for straw and feed; the seeds are always brought from without. Further men- 

 tion must be made of the fogs and especially of the appearance of microscopic fungi, such as 

 smut and ergot. At times, continuous rains prevent the grain from ripening and hinder 

 harvest operations; at others hail, laying the crop, are the cause of failure. 



It is stated above that in localities forming part of the zone where the rest-system 

 is practised agriculture is, if not the only at any rate, an essential source of the peaple's pros- 

 perity, and the sale of the surplus produce, the principal source of its money income. Such 

 grain surplus finds a market in different directions. The wheat from the Altai, the steppe re- 

 gions, and the southern part of the Tobolsk government, goes partly in a raw state, partly in 

 meal, to the west, namely to European Russia. Nearly the whole of the surplus of oats is 

 consumed by the great Siberian tract. The same traffic over the tract swallows up a consid- 

 erable part of the grain produced in its neighbourhood. Lastly a large part of the grain 

 surplus of the agricultural region contributes to the food supply of the population of the non- 

 agricultural borderlands of Siberia, or is bought up by the gold mines for the needs of their 

 miners. There still remains a large quantity which goes to the distilleries to be converted 

 into spirits. All these outlets for the grain produce, in spite of their apparent variety, have one 

 common feature, namely they all absorb the surplus from good harvests and do not return it 

 when there is a crop failure. 



Siberia does not yet possess a properly organized local grain trade, capable of 

 equalizing surplus and deficit according to good and bad seasons, and regularizing the 

 prices of grain. Neither does there exist such a regulator of the fluctuations in harvests 

 and prices according to locality. In consequence of the immensity of the distances in 

 Siberia and the insufficiency of the ways of communication grain, grown in abundance 

 for example, in the Yenisei and even Tomsk governments, cannot supply the deficit 



