Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/94

Rh 78 RUSSIA [FAUNM. ingly common, as also the wolf and the bear in the north ; but the glutton (Gulo borcalis), the lynx, and even the elk (G. dices) are rapidly disappearing. The wild boar is confined to the basin of the Diina, and the Bison europea to the Bielovyezha forests. The sable has quite disappeared, being found only on the Urals ; the beaver is found at a few places in Minsk, and the otter is very rare. On the other hand, the hare (roussak), and also the grey partridge (Perdix cinerea), the hedgehog, the quail, the lark, the rook ( Trypanocorax frugilcga), and the stork find their way into the coniferous region as the forests are cleared (Bogdanoff). The avifauna of this region is very rich; it includes all the forest and garden birds which are known in western Europe, as well as a very great variety of aquatic birds. A list, still incomplete, of the birds of St Petersburg shows 251 species. Hunting and shoot- ing give occupation to a great number of persons. The reptiles are few. As for fishes, all those of western Europe, except the carp, are met with in the lakes and rivers in immense quantities, the characteristic feature of the region being its wealth in Coregoni and in Salmonidae generally. In the Ante-Steppe the forest species proper, such as Plcromys volans and Tamias striatus, disappear, but the common squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris], the weasel, and the bear are still met with in the forests. The hare is increasing rapidly, as well as the fox. The avifauna, of course, becomes poorer ; nevertheless the woods of the Steppe, and still more the forests of the Ante-Steppe, give refuge to many birds, even to the hazel-hen ( Tetrao bonasia), the woodcock, and the black grouse (Tetrao tetrix, T. urogalliui). The fauna of the thickets at the bottom of the river valleys is decidedly rich, and includes aquatic birds. The destruction of the forests and the advance of wheat into the prairies are rapidly impoverishing the Steppe fauna. The various species of rapacious animals are disappearing, together with the colonies of marmots ; the insectivores are also becoming scarce in consequence of the destruction of insects, while vermin, such as the suslik (Spermo- philus, see MARMOT), become a real plague, as also the destructive insects which have been a scourge to agriculture during recent years. 1 The absence of Coregoni is a characteristic feature of the fish-fauna of the Steppes; the carp, on the contrary, reappears, and the rivers are rich in sturgeons (Adpenserides). On the Volga below Nijni Novgorod the sturgeon (Acipenscr mthenus), and others of the same family, as also a very great variety of ganoids and Teleostei, appear in such quantities that they give occupation to nearly 100,000 people. The mouths of the Caspian rivers are especially celebrated for their wealth of fish. 8 Ethno- Prehistoric anthropology is a science of very recent growth in graphy. Russia ; and, notwithstanding the energy displayed within that field during the last twenty years, the task of reconstructing the early history of man on the plains of eastern Europe is daily becom- ing more complicated as new data are brought to light. Remains of Palaeolithic man, contemporary with the large Quaternary mammals, are few in Russia ; they are known only in Poland, Pottava, and Voronezh, and perhaps also on the Oka. Those of the later portions of the Lacustrine period, on the contrary, are so numerous that scarcely one old lacustrine basin in the regions of the Oka, the Kama, the Dnieper, not to speak of the lake-region itself, and even the White Sea coasts, can be mentioned where remains of Neolithic man have not been discovered, showing an unexpected variety of minor anthropological features, even at that remote period. The Russian plains nave been, however, the scene of so many migrations of various races of mankind, the dwelling-places of prehistoric man and the routes followed during his migrations were so clearly indicated by natural conditions, and so often re- occupied, or again covered by new waves of colonization and migra- tion, that at many places a series of deposits belonging to widely distant epochs are found superposed. Settlements belonging to the Stone age, and manufactories of stone implements, burial grounds (kostishchas) of the Bronze epoch, earthen forts (gorodishchas), and i The Year 1884 with regard to Agriculture, St Petersburg, 1885, gives nearly- complete lists of them. of Russia, beyond a valuable sketchVfor the general reader) by SI. Bogdanoff in the Appendix to the Russian translation of Reclus's Oeogr. Univ., v., the classical work of Pallas, Zoographia Kosso-Aiiatica, and the works dealing with different departments of the fauna in different parts of Russia, must be resorted to. These Include the following : Syevertsoff, for the birds of south-eastern Russia; Bog- danoff, Birdt and Mammal t of the Black- Earth Region of the Volga Basin ; Kare- lin for the southern Urals; Kessler for fishes ; Strauch, Dit ScMangen det Rust. R., for reptiles generally ; Rodoszkowski and the publications of the Entomological Society generally for insects; Czerniavsky for the marine fauna of the Black Sea; Kessler for that of Lakes Onega and Ladoga; Grimm for the Caspian; and the publications of the scientific societies -for a very great number of monographs dealing with departments of the fauna of separate governments, seas, and lakes. The fauna of the Baltic provinces is described in full in the Memoiri of the scientific bodies of these provinces. MiddcndorfTs Sitriritche Reise, vol. iv., Zoology, though dealing more especially with Siberia, is an invaluable source of Information for the Russian fauna generally. Vega-expedilionent Vetenikapliga Jakttagelter may be consulted for the mammals of the tundra region and marine fauna. For more detailed bibliographical information see Aperfu det travaux too-ge'ographiqites, published at St Petersburg in connexion with the Exhibition of 1878; and the index Vkatatel Rustkoi Literatury for natural science, mathema- tics, and medicine, published since 1872 by the Society of the Kieff university. grave mounds (kurgans) of which last four different types are known, the earliest belonging to the Bronze period arc superposed upon and obliterate one another, so that a long series of researches is necessary in order that sound generalizations may be reached. Two different races a brachycephalic and a dolichocephalic can be distinguished among the remains of the earlier Stone period (Lacustrine period) as having inhabited the plains of eastern Europe. But they are separated by so many generations from the earliest historic times that sure conclusions regarding them are impossible ; at all events, as yet Russian archaeologists are not agreed as to whether the ancestors of the Slavonians were Sarmatians only or Scythians also (Samokvasoff, Lemiere), whose skulls have nothing in common with those of the Mongolian race. The earliest points that can, comparatively speaking, be regarded as settled must thus be taken from the 1st century, when the Northern Finns migrated from the North Dwina region towards the west, and the Sarmatians were compelled to leave the region of the Don, and to cross the Russian steppes from east to west, under the pressure of the Aorzes (the Mordvmian Erzya ?) and Siraks, who in their turn were soon followed by the Huns and the Ugur-Turkish stem of Avars. It appears certain, moreover, that in the 7th century southern Russia was occupied by the empire of the KHAZARS (q.v.), who drove the Bulgarians, descendants of the Huns, from the Don, one section of them migrating up the Volga to found there the Bul- garian empire, and the remainder migrating towards the Danube. This migration compelled the Northern Finns to advance farther west, and a mixture of Tavasts and Karelians penetrated to the south of the Gulf of Finland. v ' Finally, it is certain that as early as the 8th century, and probably still earlier, a stream of Slavonian colonization, advancing eastward from the Danube, was thrown on the plains of south- western Russia. It is also most probable that another similar stream the northern, coming from the Elbe, through the basin of the Vistula ought to be distinguished. In the 9th century the Slavonians already occupied the Upper Vistula, the southern part of the lake region, and the central plateau in its western parts. They had Lithuanians to the west ; various Finnish stems, mixed towards the south-east with Turkish stems (the present Bashkirs) ; the Bulgars, whose origin still remains doubtful, on the middle Volga and Kama ; and to the south-east the Turkish-Mongolian world of the Petchenegs, Potovtsi, Uzes, &c. ; while in the south, along the Black Sea, extended the empire of the Khazars, who kept under their rule several Slavonian steins, and perhaps also some of Finnish origin. In the 9th century also the Ugrians are supposed to have left their Ural abodes and to have crossed south-eastern and southern Russia on their way to the basin of the Danube. If these numerous migrations on the plains of Russia be taken into account, and if we add to them the Mongolian invasion, the migration of South Slavonians towards the Oka, the North Slavonian colonization extending north-east towards the Urals and thence to Siberia, the slow advance of Slavonians into Finnish territory on the Volga, and at a later period their advance into the prairies on the Black Sea, driving back the Turkish stems which occupied them, if we consider trie manifold mutual influences of these three races on one another, we shall be able to form a faint idea of the present population of European Russia. If the Slavonians be subdivided into three branches the western (Poles, Czechs, and Wends), the southern (Serbs, Bulgarians, Croa- tians, &c.), and the eastern (Great, Little, and White Russians), it will be seen that, with the exception of some 3,000,000 Ukrainians or Little Russians, in East Galicia and in Poland, and a few on the south slope of the Carpathians, the whole of the East Slavonians occupy, as a compact oody, western, central, and southern Russia. Like other races of mankind, the Russian race is not a pure one. The Russians have taken in and assimilated in the course of their history a variety of Finnish and Turco-Finnish elements. Still, craniological researches show that, notwithstanding this fact, the Slavonian type has maintained itself with remarkable persistency Slavonian skulls ten and thirteen centuries old exhibiting the same anthropological features as are seen in those of our own day. This may be explained by a variety of causes, of which the chief is the maintenance by the Slavonians down to a very late period of gentile organization and gentile marriages, a fact vouched for, not only in the pages of Nestor, but still more by deep traces still visible in the face of society, the gens later on passing into the village community, and the colonization being carried on by great compact bodies. This has all along maintained the same characters. The Russians do not emigrate as isolated individuals ; they migrate in whole villages. The overwhelming numbers of the Slavonians, and the very great differences in ethnical type, belief, mythology, between the Aryans and Turanians, may have contributed in the same direction, and throughout the written history of the Slavonians we see that, while a Russian man, far away from his home among Siberians, readily marries a native, the Russian woman seldom does the like. All these causes, and especially the first-mentioned, have enabled the Slavonians to maintain their ethnical features in a
 * Bibliography. There being no general recent work published on the fauna