The climate of Siberia is naturally opposed to the cultivation of cereals, which have to struggle against droughts, autumnal fogs, and late and early frosts. During the last ten years some very interesting meteorological observations have been made at Irkutsk, whereby it has been discovered that July is the only month in which it never freezes. Then, again, in the government of Tobolsk, and to the west of that of Tomsk, in addition to these climatic drawbacks, the crops are often devastated by myriads of _kobylkas_, a sort of locust or grasshopper which comes from the Kirghiz Steppes. Under these circumstances, agriculture in Siberia may well be said to be an even more arduous way of earning a livelihood than it is in Russia proper. It not unfrequently happens that the crops fail utterly, and during the last ten years it has been noticed that these disasters are mainly due to increasing impoverishment of the soil. The irregular condition of the crops is all the more disastrous in Siberia because of the lack of means of communication which impedes the easy transport of corn from one district to another, and results in enormous fluctuations in prices, that often spell ruin to the unfortunate peasants. The introduction of the railway to Irkutsk occasioned a notable reduction in the price of bread in Eastern Siberia, but, on the other hand, the principal line, unfortunately, transports agricultural products from Siberia to the region of the Volga. But a matter which is even of greater importance than that of intercommunication are the extremely antiquated methods of cultivation which the peasants insist upon retaining. In the first place, their notions of preparing the reclaimed soil for culture are absolutely barbarous. All they do is to scratch up the immediate surface of the earth with a sort of plough which dates from the Iron Age, and then sow their crop. When the field is exhausted, which, not having been properly manured, it very soon is, it is abandoned for a period of years until it recovers some of its reproductive qualities. With improved agricultural implements the earth could be more deeply ploughed, and at a very little distance beneath the surface it is almost invariably extremely rich. The question is how to induce the peasants to change methods which have been handed down to them from their ancestors through the ages. It is of course much to be regretted that in Siberia there exists no great land-owners wealthy enough to introduce modern improvements, and thus teach their humbler neighbours the value of progress by practical illustration; but until means of communication are facilitated and improved it will be difficult to induce men of wealth and education to settle in a country which, however naturally rich it may be, is, to say the best of it, exceptionally unattractive. Even in Russia, where so many noblemen, owing to the great losses which they sustained at the