The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

'LITHUANIA. 259lines of erratic boulders. A much larger area is covered by the marshes, especiallyin Grodno, though the inhabitants are constantly reclaiming the land for cultivation.The old forests, formerly of vast extent, have also largely disappeared, andthe solitary woodmen's huts are now mostly represented by villages, and eventowns surrounded for miles by cleared lands.There still, however, remains the vast forest of the Bela-Yeja, or "WhiteTower," covering nearly the whole of the plateau comprised between the sourcesof the Narev and the course of the Bug north of Brest-Litovskiy, with a totalarea of 850 square miles. But parts of this region, known as Belo-VejskayaPuchtcha, consist, especially in the south and south-west, of moorlands varied withFig. 122. Lakes and Swamps in- the Government of Vitebsk.Scale 1 :1T0.00O.I_^ptui.m o rv^g^-j;ervs^r ..&j"PEIU'-liRonIT7>;,f,strips of heath, stunted pine groves, and fields of rye. Northwards, however, theforest proper is continued by other woodlands almost to the Niemen. The meanelevation of this wooded plateau is about 600 feet. It differs in the great varietyof its vegetation from the interminable and monotonous pine, fir, or birch forests ofNorthern and Central Russia. By 1830 Eichwald had already here collected1,205 species, and although the pine prevails, the fir, oak, birch, beech, maple,alder, and lime everywhere abound, and a sort of secondary forest is formed by anundergrowth of such deciduous plants as the willow, hazel, wild vine, and elder,while beneath the lofty avenues of conifers the ground is carpeted with mosses,lichens, and the wild strawberry.In these virgin woodlands still roam herds of bisons almost in a wild state,