[Illustration: AMERICAN BISON IN THE SNOW.] To reach Antoniny from the railway at Schepetowka our route lay nearly due south. Pilawin, on the other hand, lies about eighty kilometres north of the railway, and we had therefore to return to Schepetowka; this journey being accomplished on the Saturday in about three and a half hours, the road being in much better condition than on the previous Thursday. Saturday night was spent in a small single-storeyed house belonging to our host at Schepetowka; and by nine o’clock on the Sunday morning we were ready to start for Pilawin. [Illustration: WAPITI IN THE SNOW.] Here a few lines may be devoted to the nature of the country between Antoniny and Schepetowka. Throughout the whole district the soil consists of black alluvial mould, apparently extending to a great depth. The contour of the country takes the form of a series of low undulating and more or less nearly parallel ridges or hills, separated by wide valleys, and running to a considerable extent at right angles to the main direction of the road. In each valley is a river or a series of ponds, near to which a village is almost invariably situated. The rich soil yields luxuriant crops of wheat, oats, maize, millet, buckwheat, hemp, and sugar-beet; the latter being a crop yielding a large revenue to the owner. Although the country as a whole is open--reminding one, were it not for the undulations, strongly of Argentina--oak-forests are to be met with here and there. From the ponds and rivers are obtained abundance of carp and pike, which afford the fish-supply to the inhabitants of the district on fast days as well as on other occasions. At Schepetowka occurs a deposit of thin-bedded sandy limestone mixed with sand, containing numbers of marine shells of Tertiary age; this sand being employed at Antoniny and elsewhere as gravel. I collected some of these shells on the garden-paths at Antoniny, and when I returned home took them to the British Museum, where they were identified as _Trochus podolicus_, a species characteristic of the Sarmatian stage of the Miocene division of the Tertiary period.[1] As the species was unrepresented in the collection, the specimens were a welcome addition to the Museum. Later on, when visiting one of the Count’s sugar-factories at Koretz (a large town on the Kieff road near Pilawin), I was shown specimens of a white limestone containing marine fossils. At the British Museum these were identified as _Trochus podolicus_ and _Mactra podolica_; the latter species also belonging to the Sarmatian stage, and likewise unrepresented in the collection. The _Mactra_, it may be added, is a bivalve, and the _Trochus_ a spiral univalve shell. [1] See Geikie’s _Text-Book of Geology_, 1st edition, p. 867. [Illustration: WAPITI CALLING.]