northern part of this is a Stipa-steppe which I prefer to omit, 

 as I have not seen it, and it does not occur farther south. 

 The southern part is a desert in the sense employed in this 

 memoir, (see chap. 5) with its northern boundary, according 

 to TANFILJEW, (1903, pp. 386, 388) extending from the southern 

 end of the Mugodshar Mts. to the town of Uralsk, and 

 which, in a more or less changed form (the "Kalmyk Steppe") 

 extends westwards to the foot of the Jergeni Mts. 1 ) But this 

 northern desert must be far less warm or less dry (perhaps 

 both) than the deserts south of the Aral Sea. We are led to 

 this conclusion because Hippophae rhamnoides, Salix repens, 

 Koeleria glauca, Elymus arenarius, Populus tremula, Amygda- 

 lus nana, Rhamnus cathartica and several other plants (see 

 SAWITSH p. 224) occur here -near their southern limit on the 

 plain, although several of them e. g. Hippophae and Amygda- 

 lus are again found in the mountains to the south (Compare 

 BQRSZCZOW cited later p. 29, point 1,3) The list of plants 

 given later (chap. 12) would convey a less striking picture 

 of the character of the desert if these plants were included 

 in it, and for this reason I have excluded the Kirghiz Steppe; 

 moreover, as already stated, the expedition did not explore it. 



What name then can be given to the territory, delineated 

 as above, and whose vegetation is the subject of our memoir? 



The area from the Caspian Sea and far into China is 

 generally designated "Turkestan" and, even if in accordance 

 with MUSHKETOW, we limit it to the lowlands west and north 

 of the mountains, it will still include the Balchash Basin and 

 the Kirghiz Steppe which we wish to exclude. The same 



*) According to BEKETOFF (1886) and PATSCHOSKIJ (1892) the Jergeni 

 Mts. form the boundary between European and Asiatic vegetation, the 

 former is the steppe of southern Russia, for the most part under cultiva- 

 tion, the latter is a desert, the Aralocaspian steppe, as PATSCHOSKIJ terms 

 it. According to RADDE (1899), the Jergeni forms the boundary between 

 better humus soil (4 7 per ct.) towards the west and poor humus soil 

 (under 2 per ct.) towards the east. Finally, according to WOEIKOFF (Hann 

 III p. 194) the Jergeni Mts. coincide with part of the eastern limit of Rus- 

 sia's regular summer rains, which is evidently the cause underlying the 

 contrast between vegetation and soils. 



