AGRICULTURE. As to agriculture, Siberia must be divided into western and eastern halves. West ern Siberia is more fertile and more thickly popu lated and is chiefly devoted to agriculture (nine tenths of the inhabitants are tillers of the soil). while mining and hunting are still more promi nent in Eastern Siberia. All the land, with small exceptions, belongs to the Crown, which leases it to the separate communes, by which the land is redistributed among the inhabitants from time to time. All the best farming land has been taken up and many immigrants are now trying to make homes by the difficult operation of clearing tim ber from the southern edge of the woodlands. Farming, in the American sense. can be carried on only in the south (in the west up to latitude 60° N.; in the east to 55°), where most of the ordinary grains, potatoes, onions, melons, etc., are produced. The agricultural or southern belt of Western Siberia extends from the western bor der to Lake Baikal, comprises about 178.000 square miles, three-fourths of which is good farming land with an alluvial soil (in the ex treme west, the soil is black earth like that of the Russian wheat belt), and is well adapted for the cultivation of wheat, oats, rye, and barley, as well as cattle-raising. Nearly 9.000.000 acres were under cultivation in 1899; at the opening of the twentieth century the average annual harvest of cereals was nearly 3,000.000 tons (approximately 100,000,000 bushels) a year. of which about 60 per cent. was wheat and oats, 20 per cent. rye, and 20 per cent. barley. It is estimated that 300.000,000 acres all told may he turned into farming lands, of which the Amur and maritime provinces will supply 69,000,000 acres. The summers in the east, however, are not very favorable fm• cereal crops, on account of exces sive moisture. Fruit and vines flourish only in a
few sheltered localities on the Ussuri River.
Horses, cattle, and sheep are behind agricul ture in importance. but stock-raising is growing, particularly in Western Siberia. where there are 12.000,000 head, of which 60 per cent. are sheep. In 1880 no hotter was made in Siberia, but in 1902 there were 2500 butter factories, and the production in that year in the governments of Tobolsk and Tomsk and the Province of Aknio husk was ON er 80,000,000 pounds. The price of milk sold to the butter factories, which are owned and conducted by butter-exporting com panies, advanced from S and 9 cents a pool (36 pounds, equivalent to about 18 quarts) in 1894 to 20 and to 25 cents in 1902.
1\1AxurAcTunEs. Previous to 1890 the manu facturing industrks were almost entirely confined to tanning, tallow-boiling, distilling, briek-mak ing, and ore-smelting (gold and silver ore treated at 1Sarnaul and Nertchinsk). The build ing of the Trans-Siberian liaih•ond has given con siderable impetus to manufacturing by making it easier and less costly to import machinery for mills. At the same time the railroad has in jured the household industries, which formerly supplied most of the clothing, fnrniture. and utensils, by enlarging the facilities for the im portation of Russian manufactures. Tomsk is the largest manufacturing centre and its mills and factories are now supplying poreelain, re fined sugar, flour, iron wares, carpets, and other products in considerable variety. Other western towns also are growing in this respect ; and in the east, the Amin- Province numbered 69 and the maritime provinces 60 factories in 1901. The chief impediments are lack of good workmen and the high cost of fuel.