watershed. To the east of these two provinces, in the watershed of the Obi, comes the Government of Tomsk, which includes also the whole of the Siberian Altai.
As stated above, the best agricultural land is found in a belt between the sub-Arctic forest and the dry steppes between latitudes 55 and 57. It is not improbable that the sub-Arctic forests and swamps once extended farther south than they do now. There are, moreover, indications that the dry steppes have encroached upon the southern fringe of the forest zone, forming a belt, the so-caUed "lyeso-steppe" or "woodland steppe." This belt, which is about 100 miles wide from north to south, and 1000 miles long from east to west, and is partly traversed by the Siberian railway, consists of scattered birch scrub interspersed with open grassy areas. Here the soil is covered several inches deep with a layer of peaty mould, desiccated remains of what probably were once sub-Arctic mossy wastes. It is to this belt that Russian agricultural colonization has been directed within the last half-century, introducing itself as a wedge between the forest zone on the north and the Tartar steppes on the south. In the two provinces of Tobolsk and Tomsk it is estimated that there are 190,000 square miles of this type of country suitable for agriculture; and of this 80,000 square miles lie in the southern and western parts of the Tobolsk Government in the watershed of the Ishim and Tobol. Here lies the district of Kurgan which, in spite of its fertility, has an average population of no more than thirty persons to the square mile, while the rest of this zone in the Tobolsk Government has less than ten persons per square
