winter temp.-69.8°. To this temperature we must add the frequency of snow-storms.[1]
Following the change of climate from north to south we can divide Siberia into two physical zones: (a), Northern zone with a polar climate, covered with tundra and tayga, and (b), Southern zone with a sub-polar climate covered with steppes, fertile valleys, and mountains.
The Northern zone is covered with frozen swamp, and, where ice does not cover the ground, the frozen desert or tundra predominates. "Only in the less cold and therefore chiefly southern tracts in the arctic zone, in more favourable localities" are to be found "willow-bushes and small meadows on river-banks and in fjords, or even formations of dwarf shrubs, which consist of a denser growth of the same evergreen, small-leaved, shrubby species as appear singly in the tundra between mosses and lichens. ... A distinction is made between Moss-tundra or Polytrichum-tundra, and Lichen-tundra. . . . Where the climate is most rigorous the vegetation forms only widely separated patches on the bare, usually stony soil, and we have Rock-tundra. Shallow depressions of the tundra, where the water of melted snow and ice accumulates in the soil, become swamps in the form of Tundra-moor." In certain places protected from the drying winds oases are formed, "where the sunbeams fall almost perpendicularly, and thus warm the water in the soil so that plants can obtain it in actual abundance."[2]
South of tundra there extends tayga, i.e. primitive pine forests growing on the swampy ground and abounding in furry animals. Tayga is thus the boundary land between the northern and southern zones of Siberia.
The primitive state of nature in the northern zone determines the human life. Taking into consideration the poor quality of the grasses and the enormous expanses covered with moss, lichen, and marshes, cattle-breeding as
- ↑ W. Jochelson, The Koryak, p. 392.
- ↑ A. F. W. Schimper, op. cit., pp. 685-6.
