However productive Siberia may eventually become, it can never solely depend for its prosperity upon its agricultural resources. Happily, the subsoil is richer than the upper crust, on account of the great abundance of ore of various kinds which it conceals. The gold and silver mines, however, alone, up to the present, have been worked to any extent, although a few of the iron mines have been slightly exploited. Even in the case of gold, however, only the alluvial mines have been touched in those valleys where gold exists, and nowhere have the rock veins been opened. More can hardly be expected in a country which is nearly destitute of the proper means of transport; hence the extreme difficulty of conveying the necessarily heavy and elaborate machinery required for the extraction of the gold from the rock. Then, again, the rock ore is only to be found at great distances from inhabited centres in unexplored forests and mountainous regions. The diggings, on the other hand, are much easier, demanding no other implements than a sieve and a spade. The siftings have been exploited in great numbers from end to end of Siberia, their takings proving, since 1895, equal to two-thirds of the gold product of the whole of the Russian Empire, the fourth largest gold-centre in the world, coming immediately after the United States, Australia, and the Transvaal. The amount of gold abstracted from the Siberian mines since 1895 amounts to not less than £5,000,000, and this figure, high as it is, is, in all probability, much under the mark, the miners very often retaining a good deal of their findings for themselves. The Government is the only buyer of Siberian gold. It has the right to claim on purchasing the gold from the miners between 15 and 20 per cent. of the ore. This system of taxation is extremely pernicious, since it tempts the miners, as already stated, to conceal the real amount of their takings. An increase in the surface tax would compensate for the suppression of the official claim upon the net product, and would put an end to a great deal of fraud. I have been assured that a reform in this sense may soon be expected. The enforced obligation of selling to the State becomes, in the long-run, exceedingly irksome to concessionaires, because it forces them to send their gold to a great distance, to the laboratories at Tomsk and Irkutsk, where the official agents analyze it to determine its value, whereas, of course, it would be much simpler to send it direct to Europe, and there sell it to speculators who would promptly pay the price demanded. Another drawback in the present system is that the miners have often to wait a long time for ready cash, which is absolutely necessary to them in their business. Sometimes the Government keeps them waiting until their gold has reached St. Petersburg, and they are ultimately obliged to discount it according to the very high tariff rates prevailing in Siberia. The