"For making painters' oil. The exports of tallow and lumber are each about twelve million rubles. The chief imports are raw cotton, metals, machinery, tea, and manufactured goods. The soil of Russia varies greatly, and large portions of it consist of sandy plains and vast morasses. The condition of agriculture is improving under the encouragement of the government, but does not yet compare favorably with most of the western countries of Europe. Nearly half the land is unimproved, and one fourth is forest land, which, however, is so badly managed that it produces but a small fraction of what it might yield. Iron, copper, gold, silver, and platinum are mined in the Ural Mountain region and in Siberia. Iron is produced in excess of the wants of the empire, and almost all the platinum in use in the world comes from Russia. Vast quantities of salt are mined, and manufactured from the brine springs. Peter the Great and all his successors have encouraged manufactures, and the empire has made great progress in this direction. Raw cotton, to the value of about forty million rubles, is imported for the use of the mills. Woollen and silk goods are also manufactured in considerable quantities. "Nearly the whole of Russia is in higher latitude than the United States, the Crimea, or southern portion, being in the latitude of Maine, and St. Petersburg on about the same parallel as the northern point of Labrador and the southern point of Greenland. About the middle of November the Neva freezes, and is not open again till the last of April. In December and January the thermometer sometimes indicates twenty-five degrees below zero; but the average temperature at St. Petersburg in winter is eighteen degrees above zero; in Moscow, fifteen degrees; in Archangel, nine degrees. The average in summer is sixty degrees in St. Petersburg, sixty-five degrees in Moscow, and fifty-eight degrees in Archangel. The climate is generally healthy, though there are various maladies peculiar to different regions, as scrofula and scurvy.