The ethnographical limits of the Lithuanians are undefined, and their number is variously estimated. The Letts occupy a part of the Courland peninsula of Livonia and of Vitebsk, a few other settlements being spread also in the governments of Kovno, St Petersburg and Moghilev. The Lithuanians proper inhabit the governments of Kovno, Vilna, Suvalki and Grodno; while the Samogitians or Zhmud inhabit the governments of Kovno and Suvalki. To these must be added about 200,000 Borussians, the whole number of Lithuanians and Letts in Russia being, according to the census of 1897, 3,094,469. They are slowly extending towards the south, especially the Letts; numerous emigrants have penetrated into Slavonic lands as far as the government of Voronezh. The Lithuanians are well built; the face is mostly elongated, the features fine; the very fair hair, blue eyes and delicate skin distinguish them from Poles and Russians. Their dress is usually plain in comparison with that of Poles, and the predominance in it of greyish colours has been frequently noticed. Their chief occupation is agriculture. The trades in towns are generally carried on by men of other races--mostly by Germans, Jews or Poles. The only exception is afforded to some extent by the Letts. The Samogitians are good hunters, and all Lithuanians are given to apiculture and cattle breeding. But the Lithuanians, as well in the Baltic provinces as in the central ones, were not until the most recent time proprietors of the soil they tilled. They have given a few families to the Russian nobility, but the great mass of the people became serfs of foreign landowners, German and Polish, who reduced them to the greatest misery. Since the Polish insurrection of 1863, the Russian government has given to the Lithuanians the land of the Polish proprietors on much easier terms than in central Russia; but the allotments of soil and the redemption taxes are very unequally distributed; and a not insignificant number of peasants (the _chinsheviki_) were even deprived of the land they had for centuries considered their own. The Letts remain in the same state as before, and are restrained from emigrating _en masse_ only by coercive measures. The Letts of Courland, with the exception of about 50,000 who belong to the Greek Church, are Lutherans. Nearly all can read. Those of the government of Vitebsk, who were under Polish dominion, are Roman Catholics, as well as the Lithuanians proper, a part of whom, however, have returned to the Greek Church, in which they were before the union with Poland. The Samogitians are Roman Catholics; they more than other Lithuanians have conserved their national features. But all Lithuanians have maintained much of their heathen practices and creed; the names of pagan divinities, very numerous in the former mythology, are continually mentioned in songs, and also in common speech.