The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

* Mean temperature in degrees Fahrenheit :YEGETATIOX. 101the eastern section of the continent, the expression is so far justified by the climaticconditions removing her, so to say, several degrees nearer to the pole. The monthof January in Odessa and Taganrog has the same temperature as Christiania, 900miles farther north.*The vegetation noticed in passing along a meridian line brings the climate intofull relief, and determines its several zones. Around the northern seas therestretch marshy wastes and bare lands, producing little beyond the reindeer moss,lichens, and stunted shrubs shorter than the prairie grass. This is the zone of thevast humid lowlands known as the tundras. South of them begins the region of lowtimber, the birch and silver pines here growing with sufficient vigour to deservethe name of trees. Beyond them true forests cover nearly all the land, includingmagnificent specimens of the birch and of several conifers, and leaving no room forcultivation beyond a few isolated patches of cleared ground.The region of deciduousvegetation, comprising the greater part of Central Russia, is most favourable toagriculture, and here flourish the chief products of the soil—rye, flax, and hemp.The "black lands," occupying a wide area stretching from the Dnieper valley tothe foot of the Ural, are the domain of golden wheat, fruit trees, and tall grasses,followed by a last zone of maize and the vine along the shores of the Euxine,in Bessarabia, and the Crimea. Between the steppe and forest lands the contrastis abrupt ; but elsewhere the general aspect of the land is extremely uniform,especially in winter, when the snow-clad fields stretch beyond the horizon, whenthe dark pine branches are borne down by their snowy burdens, and the delicatebirch is stippled in white. Even in summer, and far from the great woodlands,the tilled lands retain their monotonous aspect, seeming to form but a singlelimitless corn-field, rarely relieved by the quickset hedge, patches of green, orisolated farmsteads, with their shady foliage and garden plots. The travellersweeps by with his well-spanned team, but around him the scene never changes,and the horizon is broken only at intervals by the glittering cross surmountingthe dome of the painted village church.Changes within the respective limits of the vegetable zones could not fail to bebrought about with the flow of time, and the traces of the glacial epoch are stillobvious enough to mark the vicissitudes of the climate ; but during the historicperiod such phenomena have been extremely rare. It is certain that since thesixteenth century the climate has undergone no change in the Baltic Provinces,whence we may infer that elsewhere also it can have been but slightly modified.During forty years in that century the ice on the Dvina generally broke up aboutApril 9th ; in the next century this took place for ninety-one years on the 7th, and