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 publisked 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 Zembia, 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 sustenence 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 
