Variation in the Price and Supply of Wheat. 
increase. Under serfdom, the immense territories of the pro- 
prietors were farmed at the least possible cost ; the main 
object was to raise food for the inhabitants. In favourable 
years a store was accumulated ; buried, perhaps, in heaps, and 
covered up with earth, to be dug out when the years of plenty 
came to an end. Occasionally, the wants of other countries 
made tliemselves known, even in the most distant provinces. 
The cultivators were tempted to break into their heaps. The 
mass of sprouted corn which thatched and protected them was 
stripped off, and the grain sold to the merchants, who, like 
the sons of Jacob, had " come down to buy corn," because of 
the " dearth in all lands." The corn was then loaded on pack- 
horses or into carts, and sent off in little driblets to the coast. 
The Greeks, who monopolised this traffic, generally secured a 
profit of 10s. to 155. a quarter. It was a golden age for corn- 
merchants ! 
As to the husbandman, he sold at these times what had cost 
him little and might otherwise have been wasted. The " cost 
of production," as we understand the term, has no place in 
these primitive transactions. Now, however, the word labour is 
beginning to have a real meaning among the Russian land- 
owners ; and when capital, labour, and rent assume their place 
in the rural economy of Russia, the effect of an occasional failure 
of crops will be more fully realised, and the price for which 
corn can be grown for delivery at Marseilles and in London 
will then be ascertained. On the whole, it is unlikely that the 
farmers of South Russia will ultimately be able to compete with 
those of France or America, much less with those of the United 
Kingdom. 
The exports of wheat from Taganrog for the eight years from 
1860 to 1867 inclusive, averaged about one million quarters a 
year. The prices of hard wheat in 1864 varied from 34s. 2>d. 
to 37s. 6(?., and therefore could only have been sold in England 
at a loss of about 10s. a quarter. 
The great corn-emporiums of the Black Sea and the Sea of 
Azoff are Odessa and Taganrog. The former is supplied from 
Bessarabia and Kherson and the immense tracts drained by the 
Dnieper and Dniester. 
Taganrog commands the fertile territory of which the Don is 
the outlet. This is the land of the Don Cossacks, a people not 
remarkable for settled pursuits and agricultural industry ; but 
there is no reason to believe that a Don Cossack can resist the 
laws of " development," and time may change him into a patient 
husbandman and follower of the plough ! At present each of 
these great ports sends to the West an average of about one 
million of quarters of wheat a year. 
