270 



EUSSIA IN EUEOPE. 



on the surface. The development of agriculture will gradually reduce them to a 

 vast cultivated plain, but Chernozem will then lose the charm inspired by the 

 aspect of free nature. But here, as in the prairies of the Far West, we may still 

 roam unhindered in the midst of a tall vegetation, its flowers and grassy tufts and 

 ears of corn waving above our shoulders in a boundless sea of heaving verdure. 



Coming southwards, the aspect of the steppes slowly changes according as the 

 vegetable layers diminish in depth, and the marly, granitic, or limestone strata crop 



Fig. 128. — The Kremenetz Hills. 

 Scale 1 : 250,000. 



tof P 



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50' 



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 50 



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o ,<>*'« ' -<s 



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. 5 Miles. 



out. To the grassy prairies, clothed in spring with the richest vegetation, succeed 

 plains covered with brushwood, bramble, or coarse grasses, beyond which stretch 

 vast arid tracts cultivated only in the neighbourhood of large towns. The painted 

 houses encircled by plum and cherry trees are now replaced by low grey hovels. 



