ness of wool throughout the world has only increased the demand for it in Russia, and, by bringing more wool-producing districts into activity, has actually increased prices in Russia and Western Europe.
In addition to the export of North-West Mongolian wool to Siberia, the wool trade from Eastern and South-Eastern Mongolia to Central China is of even greater importance. The wool trade in China has increased steadily of late years, and from Urga twelve times as much wool now goes via Kalgan to China than via Khiakta to Siberia. As was pointed out above, the proposed Chinese railway from Urga to Kalgan would probably cheapen the cost of transport from Mongolia to Central China and stimulate this wool trade at the expense of the export of Siberia.
Meanwhile the Russian wool merchants in Mongolia have found it more and more difficult to compete with the Chinese wool merchants, who get between them and the Mongols through political influence and their intimacy with the Mongol khans. But although the prosperity of the Russian wool traders in Mongolia has suffered severely of late, still the wool trade itself shows every sign of successful development. The decline of sheep culture in European Russia and in the immigrant parts of Siberia, owing to the gradual change from nomad life to settled agriculture, will be more than compensated for by its development in Mongolia, since nomadic stock-raising is the only industry that can ever exist on a large scale over the greater part of those desert plateaus.
e. Live Stock.—Besides wool Mongolia also exports live stock. The principal markets for this industry are in Siberia, where the Mongolian horned
