habitation, though the soil and climate of that region resembles closely the soil and climate of East Prussia.  The difference lies in the amount of labour and capital expended.  According to official statistics the area of European Russia contains, roughly speaking, 406 millions of dessyatins, of which 78 millions, or 19 per cent., are classified as neudobniya, unfit for cultivation; 157 millions, or 39 per cent., as forest; 106 millions, or 26 per cent., as arable land; and 65 millions, or 16 per cent., as pasturage.  Thus the arable and pasture land compose only 42 per cent., or considerably less than half the area.

Of the land classed as unfit for cultivation—­19 per cent. of the whole—­a large portion, including the perennially frozen tundri of the far north, must ever remain unproductive, but in latitudes with a milder climate this category of land is for the most part ordinary morass or swamp, which can be transformed into pasturage, or even into arable land, by drainage at a moderate cost.  As a proof of this statement I may cite the draining of the great Pinsk swamps, which was begun by the Government in 1872.  If we may trust an official report of the progress of the works in 1897, an area of 2,855,000 dessyatins (more than seven and a half million acres) had been drained at an average cost of about three shillings an acre, and the price of land had risen from four to twenty-eight roubles per dessyatin.

Reclamation of marshes might be undertaken elsewhere on a much more moderate scale.  The observant traveller on the highways and byways of the northern provinces must have noticed on the banks of almost every stream many acres of marshy land producing merely reeds or coarse rank grass that no well-brought-up animal would look at.  With a little elementary knowledge of engineering and the expenditure of a moderate amount of manual labour these marshes might be converted into excellent pasture or even into highly productive kitchen-gardens; but the peasants have not yet learned to take advantage of such opportunities, and the reformers, who deal only in large projects and scientific panaceas for the cure of impoverishment, consider such trifles as unworthy of their attention.  The Scotch proverb that if the pennies be well looked after, the pounds will look after themselves, contains a bit of homely wisdom totally unknown to the Russian educated classes.

After the morasses, swamps, and marshes come the forests, constituting 39 per cent. of the whole area, and the question naturally arises whether some portions of them might not be advantageously transformed into pasturage or arable land.  In the south and east they have been diminished to such an extent as to affect the climate injuriously, so that the area of them should be increased rather than lessened; but in the northern provinces the vast expanses of forest, covering millions of acres, might perhaps be curtailed with advantage.  The proprietors prefer, however, to keep them in their present condition because they give a modest revenue without any expenditure of capital.