VEGETATION. 191 



the eastern section of the continent, the expression is so far justified by the climatic 

 conditions removing her, so to say, several degrees nearer to the pole. The month 

 of January in Odessa and Taganrog has the same temperature as Christiania, 900 

 miles farther north.* 



The vegetation noticed in passing along a meridian line brings the climate into 

 full relief, and determines its several zones. Around the northern seas there 

 stretch marshy wastes and bare lands, producing little beyond the reindeer moss, 

 lichens, and stunted shrubs shorter than the prairie grass. This is the zone of the 

 vast humid lowlands known as the tundras. South of them begins the region of low 

 timber, the birch and silver pines here growing with sufficient vigour to deserve 

 the name of trees. Beyond them true forests cover nearly all the land, including 

 magnificent specimens of the birch and of several conifers, and leaving no room for 

 cultivation beyond a few isolated patches of cleared ground. The region of deciduous 

 vegetation, comprising the greater part of Central Russia, is most favourable to 

 agriculture, and here flourish the chief products of the soil — rye, flax, and hemp. 

 The "black lands," occupying a wide area stretching from the Dnieper valley to 

 the foot of the Ural, are the domain of golden wheat, fruit trees, and tall grasses, 

 followed by a last zone of maize and the vine along the shores of the Euxine, 

 in Bessarabia, and the Crimea. Between the steppe and forest lands the contrast 

 is abrupt ; but elsewhere the general aspect of the land is extremely uniform, 

 especially in winter, when the snow-clad fields stretch beyond the horizon, when 

 the dark pine branches are borne down by their snowy burdens, and the delicate 

 birch is stippled in white. Even in summer, and far from the great woodlands, 

 the tilled lands retain their monotonous aspect, seeming to form but a single 

 limitless corn-field, rarely relieved by the quickset hedge, patches of green, or 

 isolated farmsteads, with their shady foliage and garden plots. The traveller 

 sweeps by with his well-spanned team, but around him the scene never changes, 

 and the horizon is broken only at intervals by the glittering cross surmounting 

 the dome of the painted village chvirch. 



Changes within the respective limits of the vegetable zones could not fail to be 

 brought about with the flow of time, and the traces of the glacial epoch are still 

 obvious enough to mark the vicissitudes of the climate ; but during the historic 

 period such phenomena have been extremely rare. It is certain that since the 

 sixteenth century the climate has undergone no change in the Baltic Provinces, 

 whence we may infer that elsewhere also it can have been but slightly modified. 

 During forty years in that century the ic3 on the Dvina generally broke up about 

 April 9th ; in the next century this took place for ninety-one years on the 7th, and 



