ZOOLOGY AND BOTANY OF THK ALTAI MOUNTAINS. 27 



and very dirty village rather than a town. As this is the last 

 place, however, of any importance towards the Chinese frontier, 

 it is the centre of a large trade in wool, tea, and furs. A Dutch 

 fur-trader whom we found there showed us a collection of furs 

 he had made during the previous winter. Though in the early 

 days of the Russian conquest valuable furs were in such abundance 

 in this part of Siberia that all the taxes were paid in them, the 

 better kinds have now become very scarce, and the only skins 

 which we saw in great quantity were those of the Yellow Marmot 

 of Mongolia, which are now exported in enormous quantities at a 

 very low cost, and I believe are dyed in Europe to imitate the fur 

 of the Mink. We must have passed 400 or 500 horse and camel 

 loads of them on the road between Biisk and the frontier. 



All up the valley of the Obb are large villages, some of them 

 over a hundred years old, and sometimes two or three miles long, 

 and the peasants seem for the most part prosperous and wealthy, 

 according to a Rusfian peasant's ideas of wealth ; but we were 

 informed that the country was so far filled up to the foot of the 

 mountains that there was no more room for emigrants on a 

 large scale, except in the forest country to the eastward, and 

 most of the emigrant trains that we saw on the railway were 

 going farther to the East, into the di?tricts of Krasnoyarsk and 

 Irkutsk. 



At Biisk, which we reached on the last day of May, there were 

 signs of spring. The birch and poplar trees were just opening 

 their buds, and here we obtained our first view of the outlying 

 spurs of the Altai Mountains ; the country between Barnaoul and 

 Biisk, which from the map one would suppose to be mountainous, 

 being grassy rolling downs of low elevation. After some delay 

 in getting horses, we fairly entered the mountains on June 0th, 

 aud at once found an immense improvement from a naturalist's 

 point of view in the appearance of the country. Many of our 

 vfell-known old garden flow^ers such as peonies, erythroniums, 

 rhododendrons, and anemones were in full bloom, while in some 

 parts the ground was completely covered with the flowers of 

 Iris ruthenica. Butterflies also began to appear ; and though I 

 did not get any worth mentioning until we reached Ongodai, 

 which is four long days' drive through the mountains, I could see 

 that the country was of far greater interest than anything we 

 had hitherto passed through. 



The Obb river divides just below Biisk into two great branches — 



