^vhicll would no more be able lo stand the dryness of the steppes. The remains 

 of the «Tschudian canals», through which water was conducted into their fields, bear 

 witness to the fact that already this primitive people here had difficulties in procuring the 

 necessary supply of water. 



Apart from the insect, the animal life of the steppe is now poor, and the stillness 

 is here only rarely broken by the melancholy piping of some lonely bird of the desert 

 or the scratching of a lizard in the dry grass. And the sepulchral mounds that we also 

 meet with here, enhance, as it were, the serenity and quiet of this dying nature. 



The Siberian Taiga Territory and the Urjankai Country. 



The Transition Zone between the Steppes and the Primeval Forest. 



As mentioned above, the southern and south-eastern parts of the Minusinsk district 

 are moister. Only at a rather short distance from Minusinsk the scenery is changed, the 

 steppe becoming gradually more rugged, and the rather small areas of wood frequently to 

 be met with — generally consisting of pine, birch, and aspen — bear an unmistakable 

 evidence to a greater moisture. Many of the subboreal plants characterizing the wester- 

 ly steppe regions, here gradually dissappear, giving way to a vegetation mainly compo- 

 sed of boreal species of plants together with subarctic ones; the latter element especially 

 being successively more frequent when going southwards to the Sayansk mountains, where 

 the subalpine wooded tracts as to floristic conditions bear a markedly subarctic stamp. 



In dry wood of Pinus silvestris, frequently in sandy soil, there occurs here a ground 

 flora especially characterized by the pretty azure Delphinium grandiflorum, the yellow 

 Scabiosa ochroleuca, Rumex Acetosella, Erigeron ocer var. elongatus, Onosma 

 simplicissimum, Chamaerhodos erecta, and on declivities Hypeiiciiin elegans, and in 

 thickets Vicia unijuga. 



The tract of land traversed during the first three or four days may really be con- 

 sidered as a transition zone between the steppe and the virgin forest further south; it 

 forms, what is called by the Russians wooded sleppes (jxtcocTenB) stretches 

 with dry open woods, composed chiefly of various foliage trees — birches, poplars and 

 others, partly also of larch — diversified by larger or smaller steppe-like areas between 

 theme. The soil here nearly everywhere consists of the exceedingly fertile, black 

 earth, 2—3 m. deep, rich in humus and chalk, and cultivated grounds become more 

 frequent on proceeding southwards. From the hilltops here are seen to the south the 

 pointed and ragged jags of the Sayansk mountains. 



The scenery is, on the whole, very pleasant, a great number of park-hke patches of 

 wood having been left among the cultivated fields, and birches often making up veri- 

 table avenues along the roads. In some places the hillsides are overgrown with birches 

 and other foliage trees and with a very luxuriant and varying undergrowth. 



On a slope near the village of Taskina, I have recorded the following plants illu- 

 strating the composition of the vegetation and the striking difference between the 



L*9 



