218 Russia. 
While ostensibly the Czar is autocrat, the government 
is really under a bureaucracy, which is to a large extent 
corrupt, and hence the many good laws and institutions 
of which we read, may not always be found executed, 
as intended. 
The country is divided into 98 governments or prov- 
inces, each under a governor, who is, however, largely 
dependent on the central power. 
1. Forest Conditions. 
Both the forest area and the ownership is very un- 
evenly divided throughout the empire. 
As in the United States the East and West are or 
were well wooded, with a forestless agricultural region 
between, so in Russia the North and the South (Cau- 
casus Mountains) are well wooded, with a forestless 
region, the steppe, between. This leads, as with us, to 
an uneconomical exploitation of the woods, the inferior 
materials being wasted because not paying for their 
transportation. 
The larger part of European Russia is a vast plain, 
excepting for the Ural Mountains, which form the 
Eastern boundary, and the Caucasus in the South. 
Southern Russia, with the exception of the Caucasus, 
is largely prairie or steppe with hardly 4% of forest 
in the average, while some of the northern governments 
show 89% under forest cover. Here the crown owns all, 
or nearly all, while in the less wooded districts the State 
property is insignificant. 
The forest area in European Russia comprises some- 
what over 552 million acres, or 39% of the land area, 
and in Asia, where Russia occupies a territory nearly 
three times as large as its European possessions, namely 
