The method of collecting revenue in Transcaspia displays the simplicity and reliance on native agency which are seen in other branches of the administration. The principal tax is one levied on each “kibitka,” a term which conventionally includes fixed as well as movable dwellings. The rate in force at the present day is six roubles, or nearly thirteen shillings; and the incidence per head of the population, assuming the kibitka to shelter five persons, is only two shillings and sevenpence. The starshina is held responsible for the realisation of an amount equivalent to the number of kibitkas in the village multiplied by six, and he pays the sum directly into the district treasury. In practice the tax is treated as one on income, and a wide latitude is left to the starshina. He reduces the demand from widows and daily labourers to a few pence, and exempts paupers altogether; while wealthy families are made to pay as much as £22. As the kibitka tax amounts to no more than a twenty-fifth of the average family’s earnings, there is rarely any difficulty in collecting the entire demand. Malversation is extremely rare, and, in one case at least, the villagers voluntarily subscribed a sum sufficient to cover its mayor’s defalcations. In the Sarakhs district a different system is in force. There a tax is levied proportionately to the _Sū_, or unit of water, used in irrigation. Small excise duties are levied on tobacco, matches, and kerosene oil, and the owners of cattle driven from Persian territory to Transcaspian grazing-grounds pay a trifle on each head. The only other tax is one on trade, which has long been current in the Central Asian Khānates. Merchants who are not Russian subjects pay Government one-fortieth of the value of wares received or despatched by caravans. No budgets as we understand the term are published by the provincial governor; for the immense cost of the garrisons maintained in Central Asia should fairly be set off against the receipts from taxation. It is tolerably certain, however, that Russia finds her Asiatic possessions a source of heavy expenditure from the imperial treasury, which she is content to endure in view of indirect advantages which she reaps from them. Their strategical value is incalculable, for they place Persia, Afghanistān, and Western China at her mercy; while the benefit to Russian commerce, by the daily increasing movement of goods on the Transcaspian railway system, is equally conspicuous.