270 EUROPE 



and have no time for maturing. Of cereals, only oats, 

 rye, and barley can be grown in a few favoured spots : 

 the potato is grown locally. The soil of the northern 

 region, largely of glacial origin, is poor and cold, and 

 therefore unsuited for agriculture. 



The population being reduced, outside mining, to the 

 industries connected with hunting, fishing, lumbering, 

 and transport, is, of necessity, very scarce, but also very 

 hardy and industrious. In some parts, as in Finland 

 and Sweden, the meadows, which occupy clearings in the 

 vast forests, support a flourishing dairy industry. In 

 Norway, pastoral activities are limited by the steepness 

 of the mountain sides, and the impossibility of utilizing 

 them for cattle or sheep. 



Russian Steppe. Forest growth ceases altogether and 

 gives way to the steppe or dry grass-land when the 

 annual rainfall is below 20 inches, and there is a cold and 

 dry winter and a hot summer. The conditions which ac- 

 company and largely determine the appearance of this 

 new landscape are now well known : a scarcity of rain- 

 fall and atmospheric moisture ; a fairly abundant precipi- 

 tation in spring ; a period of growth limited, on the one 

 hand, by two to four months of frosty weather and, on 

 the other, by two months of excessive heat ; in winter 

 as well as summer, a dry atmosphere. Such circum- 

 stances, if they allow a low vegetation of grass and herbs, 

 are not favourable to tree growth ; but to the direct 

 climatic influences must undoubtedly be added the re- 

 sultant conditions of the ground. 



The Russian steppe is the westernmost extension of 

 that vast belt which crosses Asia between the northern 

 forests and the central deserts. It covers low, level, or 

 gently undulating plains, in which the main, if not the 

 sole, diversity is afforded by the succession of the seasons. 



