19 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. 



and at Yakoutch barley is sometimes seen to arrive 

 at maturity. 



In some districts of Lapland, situated to the 

 westward, the inhabitants are, by dint of careful 

 tillage, enabled to produce plentiful crops of rye. In 

 some spots, nearer even than this to the pole, 

 potatoes are made to supply the place of grain ; but 

 for the most part the inhabitants are constrained to 

 subsist upon dried fish. 



In Kamtchatka, which is considerably to the south 

 of Siberia, extending from 62 to 51 of north 

 latitude, but united with that province at its eastern 

 extremity, no attempts to cultivate the cereal grasses 

 have ever proved successful, the produce not having 

 in any case been sufficient to repay the labour of the 

 tillage. These failures may, however, be attributable 

 more to the generally ungrateful nature of the soil 

 than to the effects of an unkindly climate, since in 

 some spots where the land is of better quality, 

 other esculent vegetables are produced in tolerable 

 perfection ; * cabbag'es, carrots, turnips, radishes, 

 beet-raot,"and .even cucumbers, are raised constantly 

 and without difficulty. Dried fish aijd caviare form 

 the principal food of the inhabitants of Kamtchatka 

 and the islands of the' Aleoutian. Archipelago. 



Barley and. oa^s are {he-kinds of grain the culture 

 of which extends farthest, to the north in Europe. 

 The meal -which they yield, and which is 'seldom or 

 never used by the inhabitants of South Britain for 

 human food, forms,' on the contrary, the principal 

 sustenance of the inhabitants of 'Norway and Sweden, 

 of a part of Siberia, and even of Scotland. 



Rye follows next in order, being associated with 

 oats and barley in the more northern division of the 

 temperate zone. In the southern parts of Norway 

 and Sweden, in Denmark, in districts bordering on 

 the Baltic Sea, and in the north of Germany, rye 



