Russia | Page 9

the zodiacal light and the stars still shine with intense brightness.
To this severe winter, which fissures the surface and rends the rocks of the rivers into regular basalt-like columns, there succeeds a sudden and delightful spring. So instantaneous is the change that nature seems as if taken by surprise and rudely awakened. The delicate green of the opening leaf, the fragrance of the budding flowers, the intoxicating balm of the atmosphere, the radiant brightness of the heavens, all combine to impart to mere existence a voluptuous gladness. To Siberians visiting the temperate climes of Western Europe, spring seems to be unknown beyond their lands. But these first days of new life are followed by a chill, gusty and changeful interval, arising from the atmospheric disturbances caused by the thawing of the vast snowy wastes. A relapse is then experienced analogous to that too often produced in England by late east winds. The apple blossom is now nipped by the night frosts falling in the latter part of May. Hence no apples can be had in East Siberia, although the summer heats are otherwise amply sufficient for the ripening of fruit. After the fleeting summer, winter weather again sets in. It will often freeze at night in the middle of July; and after the 10th of August the sear leaf begins to fall, and in a few days all are gone, except perhaps the foliage of the larch. The snow will even sometimes settle early in August on the still leafy branches, bending and breaking them with its weight. Below the surface of the ground, winter reigns uninterrupted even by the hottest summers.
With its vast extent and varied climate, Siberia naturally embraces several vegetable zones, differing more from each other even than those of Europe. The southern Steppes have a characteristic and well-marked flora, forming a continuation of that of the Aral, Caspian and Volga plains. The treeless northern tundras also constitute a vegetable domain as sharply defined as the desert itself, while between these two zones of Steppe and tundra the forest region of Europe stretches, with many subdivisions, west and east right across the continent. Of these subdivisions the chief are those of the Ob, Yenisei, Lena, and Amur basins.
Beyond the northern tundras and southern Steppes by far the greatest space is occupied by the forest zone. From the Urals to Kamchatka the dense taiga, or woodlands are interrupted only by the streams, a few natural glades and some tracts under cultivation. The term taiga is used in a general way for all lands under timber, but east of the Altai it is applied more especially to the moist and spongy region overgrown with tangled roots and thickets, where the mari, or peat bogs, and marshes alternate with the padi, or narrow ravines. The miners call by this name the wooded mountains where they go in search of auriferous sands. But everywhere the taiga is the same dreary forest, without grass, birds, or insects, gloomy and lifeless, and noiseless but for the soughing of the wind and crackling of the branches.
The most common tree in the taiga is the larch, which best resists the winter frost and summer chills. But the Siberian woodlands also include most of the trees common to temperate Europe--the linden, alder, juniper, service, willow, aspen, poplar, birch, cherry, apricot--whose areas are regulated according to the nature of the soil, the elevation or aspect of the land. Towards the south-east, on the Chinese frontier, the birch is encroaching on the indigenous species, and the natives regard this as a sure prognostic of the approaching rule of the "White Tsar."
Conflagrations are very frequent in the Siberian forests, caused either by lightning, the woodmen, or hunters, and sometimes spreading over vast spaces till arrested by rivers, lakes or morasses. One of the pleasures of Siberian travelling is the faint odour of the woods burning in the distance.
The native flora is extremely rich in berries of every kind, supplying food for men and animals.
The extreme eastern regions of the Amur basin and Russian Manchuria, being warmer, more humid and fertile, also abound more in animal life than the other parts of Asiatic Russia. On the other hand, the Siberian bear, deer, roebuck, hare, squirrel, marmot and mole are about one-third larger, and often half as heavy again as their European congeners. This is doubtless due partly to the greater abundance of nourishment along the rivers and shores of Siberia, and partly to the fact that for ages the western species have been more preyed upon by man, living in a constant state of fear, and mostly perishing before attaining their full development.
The Arctic Seas abound probably as much as the Pacific Ocean with marine animals. Nordenskj?ld found the Siberian waters very rich in molluscs and other lower organisms, implying