is generally more profitable to utilize live stock for dairy purposes wherever possible. The live stock now sent up from the Kirghiz steppes to Petropavlovsk and Omsk provides fresh blood for the dairy stock of the Siberian peasants. The increase of dairying and cereal cultivation in Western Siberia has thus, by breaking up the large grazing ranches, caused a decline in the meat and hide trade, and this process is likely to continue as the country gradually develops.
Pig breeding has, however, developed greatly, more especially as an adjunct of dairying. In the Kurgan district, for instance, where buttermilk is plentiful, the raw material for fattening pigs is cheap, and it is probable that the export of bacon from this district to Western Europe and England will be on a large scale. Already, enterprising capitalists are establishing bacon-curing factories in Kurgan and other similar centres, and it is not improbable that within a few years Siberian bacon will have considerable effect in cheapening the price of bacon on the European markets.
Forests and the Possibilities of the Timber Industry
The enormous supplies of timber in the Western Siberian forest zone have hitherto been practically untouched, because of the absence of means of transport. In the north of Tobolsk alone there is a huge forest zone covering 200,000 square miles, which stretches north and south from Tobolsk to Obdorsk and east and west from Tiumen to North Tomsk. It consists chiefly of red wood (pinus Sylvestris), white wood (picea Obovata) and some Siberian pine
