up, so that sand and dust rise with every wind, and as the open plains are often swept by summer burans, vast quantities of loose materials are transported from place to place, and here and there accumulate in hollows and depressions, or come to rest in the lee of sheltering rocks and hills. In winter, if little snow has fallen, the unprotected ground is similarly scoured by the tempests, dust, sand, and even small stone being carried forward. Thus both in summer and winter sand and dust storms play an important role, and loose materials are piled up to great depths in valleys, and in the ravines, fissures, and crevices of the rocky hills.
As a rule these heaps and sheets of drifted sand and dust show little or no arrangement, although now and again some trace of bedding may appear. Should they chance to become well covered with snow in winter, then, when warmth returns and the snow gradually melts away, plants quickly spring up, and the heaps become fixed and cease to drift. It is obvious that not infrequently land shells, and often enough the remains of mammals, must be entombed in such wind-blown materials.
In winter, however, it is snow more commonly than dust that drifts before the wind. The great snowstorms of the subarctic steppes are quite as terrible as those of the tundras. No life can withstand the fury of the blizzards, and many are the disasters on record. Thus in 1827 all the flocks and herds that wandered over the steppes between the Volga and the Urals perished in one great storm. According to the Government report the loss sustained by the Kirghiz amounted to 10,500 camels, 280,500 horses, 30,480 cattle, and 1,012,000 sheep. Not many years pass without some disaster of this kind, and when the snow has melted away, hundreds of cattle, often far strayed, may be found huddled together in one place—some suffocated, frozen, or starved to death, others drowned in the creeks and ravines in which they had vainly sought for refuge from the blast. Now we can readily conceive how the carcasses might eventually be buried under drifted sand and dust, and the bony skeletons thus become preserved for an indefinite period.
Among the most characteristic animals of the subarctic steppes are jerboas, pouched marmots, bobac, pika or tailless hare, small hamster rat, various voles, corsac, caragan fox, manul cat, saiga, dzeggetai, wild horse, etc. Besides these, many other animals are met with in the steppes, but are hardly so characteristic, since they range into adjacent regions, to which they more properly belong. Among them may be mentioned lynx, wild-cats, tiger, wolf, jackal, common fox, martens, ermine, weasel, otter, glutton, badger, brown bear, squirrels, beaver, common hare, mountain hare, wild boar, elk, reindeer, roedeer, stag, etc. Several hundred species of birds frequent the steppes, among which may be mentioned great and little bustards, larks, grouse, buzzards, eagles, owls, etc.
We may now sum up, in a few words, those features and characters
