158 THE FOREST LANDS OF NORTHERN RUSSIA. 



ate, and arctic or antarctic regions of the globe, many of 

 these zones being susceptible of well-defined sub-divisions. 



According to a report published anonymously, but attri- 

 buted to Admiral Count Mordvinoff, Director of the 

 Agricultural Society of Russia some fifty years ago, who 

 laboured assiduously to develope the agriculture of his 

 country, Northern Russia comprises four well defined 

 regions. 



The first is the region of ice. The icy region may be 

 considered as including Nova Zembla, or more correctly, 

 Novaya Zernlna, or New Land, part of the Kolskaya dis- 

 trict, and the extreme northern point of land which pro- 

 jects into the Frozen Ocean. This region is distinguished 

 by a night of three months' duration, and by its total 

 destitution of vegetable productions, which circumstances 

 render it unfit for the permanent habitation of man and 

 domestic animals. The seal, the walrus, and fish of 

 various descriptions, which abound toward the pole, supply 

 the only means of sustenance for man, the Polar bear, and 

 its inseparable companion, the fox, except on Novaya 

 Zembia, where multitudes of a peculiar kind of mice 

 breed, and lay up heaps of roots for their winter store, and 

 these mice serve in their turn as food for the bears and 

 foxes. 



The second is the region of moss. The mossy region, 

 where the ever-frozen ground is covered with a kind of 

 greyish moss, and towards the boundaries of the following 

 region with a kind of brushwood and fir. This tract is 

 endowed by nature with an animal which alone makes it 

 habitable for man the reindeer. Its vast deserts stretch- 

 ing from Archangel along the shores of the White Sea to 

 the Eastern Ocean, are peopled by thinly scattered nomadic 

 tribes of Laplanders, Samoyeds, Ostiaks, and other abori- 

 gines, whose numbers are gradually decreasing as they 



come in contact with civilised nations In this 



region, adjacent to the Frozen Ocean, at the mouth of 

 great rivers, and near certain islands, are found astonishing 



