Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/789

Rh Y E Y E W 743 the blue masses of the tall Veronica longifolia. The meadows of the moister localities, surrounded by thickets of willow, poplar, wild cherry, and hawthorn, are still more attractive, on account of their wealth in anemones, violets, gentians, and so on, and the numerous creepers which festoon the trees and shrubs. M. Mar- tianofFs lists enumerate a total of 760 flowering and 760 crypto- gamic plants. Of the lower F-imgi and parasitical Myxomycctcs 1300 species were noted, and out of the 823 species hitherto described by specialists no less than 124 have proved to be new. Farther north ward the flora of Yeniseisk is similar in character to that of the Siberian lowlands (see SIBERIA, vol. xxii. p. 7). In the Taimyr peninsula it is represented by only 124 species of flowering plants, luna. For the fauna of Yeniseisk, see SIBERIA, vol. xxii. p. 7. apula- The steppes of the upper Yenisei have been inhabited from a on. very remote antiquity, and numberless kurgans, graves, rock in scriptions, and smelting furnaces of the successive inhabitants are scattered all over the prairies of Abakan and Minusinsk. 1 The present population exhibits traces of all these predecessors (see SIBERIA and TARTARS). Numerous survivals of Turkish and Samoyedic stems are found in the steppe land and in the Sayans ; but some of them are greatly reduced in numbers (only a few hundreds). The Kaibals, the Katcha Tartars, the Sagais, the Kyzyl and Milet Tartars, and the Kamasins have settlements of their own, and maintain their national features ; but the Karagasses, the Kotts, and the Arintses have almost entirely disappeared, and are represented only by a few families in the spurs of the Sayans. 2 The Tunguses are scattered in the least accessible tracts, and may number about 2000, or less. Several hundreds of Yakuts inhabit the Turukhansk district ; and in the tundras between the Taz and the Yenisei there are a few hundred OSTIAKS (q.v.) and Yuraks of the Samoyedic stem. The remainder of the population, which numbered&quot; in all 447,076 in 1885, consists of Kussians, partly exiles, but mostly voluntary settlers. Nearly 50,000 belong to the unfortunate category of &quot;settled&quot; exiles. The &quot;indigenes&quot; Tartars, Tunguses, Ostiaks, &c. number about 50,000. )ccupa- The chief occupation of the Russians is agriculture, which pros- ions, pers in Minusinsk, the granary of the province ; it is also carried on in west Kansk, Krasnoyarsk, and Atchinsk, and in a few villages of the Yeniseisk district, the total area of land under corn being reckoned at nearly 2,500,000 acres. Wheat, summer and winter rye, oats, barley, and buckwheat are the chief crops. Gardening is carried on in Minusinsk. Cattle-breeding is important, especially in Minusinsk. It has been estimated that there are in Yeniseisk about 270,000 horses, 240,000 cattle, 300,000 sheep, and 30,000 rein deer in Turukhansk. These figures, however, must be below the true ones. The cattle being kept throughout the winter in the steppes, the snow-storms of early spring prove disastrous, as also do the murrains, to which no fewer than 200,000 head succumbed in the Minusinsk district in 1881. Hunting and fishing are an import ant resource for most of the indigenes and for many of the Russians. Manu- The manufactures of Yeniseisk are hardly worth mentioning, all factures. capital being engaged in gold-washing or in commerce. The chief trade is in furs (exported), and in groceries and manufactured goods (imported). The gold-fields of the Yeniseisk Taiga are supplied with grain and cattle by river from the Minusinsk region, and with salt, spirits, and iron by the Angara. Attempts have recently been made to stimulate the trade in tea with north-west Mongolia. Towns. Yeniseisk is divided into five districts, the chief towns of which are KRASNOYARSK (q.v.), the capital, which had 17,155 inhabitants in 1884 ; Atchinsk (7190) and Kansk (4050), two small towns on the great Siberian highway, of which the latter is an entrepot for the gold-mines ; Minusinsk (8270) on the Tuba, close by its junc tion with the Yenisei, which has now a small but excellent natural history and ethnographical museum ; and Yeniseisk (7050), the chief entrepot for the gold-mines, having a public library and a natural history museum, created of late by exiles. Turukhansk (139) is the chief town of a vast &quot;region&quot; (krai). (P. A. K.) YEOLA, a municipal town of India, in the Nasik district, Bombay presidency, with a population (1881) of 17,685 (males 8975, females 8710). It is situated in 20 4 10&quot; N. lat. and 74 30 30&quot; E. long., 44 miles east of Nasik town, 13 miles south of Manwar station on the north-east line of the Great Indian Peninsular Railway, and nearly 12 miles from the frontier of the Nizam s dominions. Yeola is a flourishing commercial town, trading in silk and cotton goods, which it weaves, and in gold-twist, which it also manufactures. At the time of its foundation Yeola was under the emperor of 1 Besides the works of Radloff, and those mentioned in the biblio graphy of Semenoff s Dictionary, see N. Saveukoff s paper on recent explorations, in Jzvestia of East Siberian Geogr. Soc., xvii., 1887, and the Descriptive Catalogue of the Minusinsk Museum, by D. Klernentz. 2 Radloff s Aits Sibirien (2 vols., Leipsic, 1880) contains full ac counts of the various Turkish stems of Yeuiseisk. Delhi ; it subsequently passed into the hands of the rajas of Satara and then the push was. Finally it was given in grant to Yithal, the ancestor of the present chief of Vinchur, who still enjoys the revenue from the lands attached to the town, though he has no authority within it. YEOMANRY CAVALRY. See VOLUNTEERS. YEOVIL, a market town and municipal borough of Somerset, England, is situated on the river Yeo or Ivel. which here separates Somerset from Dorset, and on branch lines of the London and South Western and the Great Western Railways, 40 miles south of Bristol and 124 west- south-west of London. The streets are regular and spa cious, with a number of handsome public buildings. A few of the houses are of considerable antiquity, but within recent years the town has undergone much alteration. The church of St John the Baptist, occupying a command ing site in the centre of the town, is a large and beautiful cruciform structure in the Perpendicular style, consisting of chancel, nave of seven bays, aisles, transepts, and lofty western tower. It is described by Mr Freeman as &quot;a grand and harmonious whole, as truly the work of real artistic genius as Cologne or Winchester.&quot; There are two ecclesiastical parishes within the borough, Hendford and Yeovil Marsh. The principal secular public buildings are the town-hall in the Grecian style, erected in 1849, and the corn exchange. There are a reading room and a library in connexion with the young men s Christian association and mutual improvement society. The benevolent institu tions include Woborne s almshouses for six men and six women, the portreeves almshouses, and a few smaller charities. Water is obtained from Holywell, 8 miles dis tant, by works constructed by the corporation. Formerly the woollen manufacture was of some consequence, but this industry has now died out. The staple industry is the manufacture of gloves, for which the town has long been celebrated. Brewing and brick-making are also carried on. The agricultural trade of Yeovil is of some importance, large corn markets and cattle and horse fairs being held. The corporation consists of a mayor, four aldermen, and twelve councillors, who hold the manorial rights and also form the urban sanitary authority. The town has a commission of the peace, and petty sessions are held both by the county and the borough magistrates. The population of the municipal borough and urban sani tary district (area about 700 acres) in 1871 was 8527, and in 1881 it was 8479. Yeovil was a borough by prescription. Anciently it was called the town, borough, lordship, and hundred of Yeovil, and was in cluded in a district which soon after the Conquest was taken pos session of by the crown. The manor of Yeovil included in this district was some time afterwards assigned to the rector of St John the Baptist church, and was incorporated under the name of the portreeve and burgesses of Yeovil. In 1418 it was resigned by the rector to Henry Y., who gave the manor to the convent of the Yirgin Mary and Saint Bridget. The grant was confirmed by Edward IV. After the dissolution of the monasteries the manor was settled by Henry VIII. on Catherine Parr, who held it till her death. In 1449 the town was visited by a fire, by which 117 houses were destroyed. In 1853 Yeovil was placed under the Municipal Act. YEW. This tree (Taxus) belongs to a genus of Coni- ferge in which the ordinarily woody cone is represented by a fleshy cup surrounding a single seed. Usually it forms a low-growing tree of very diverse habit, but generally with dense spreading branches, thickly covered with very dark green linear leaves, which are given off from all sides of the branch, but which, owing to a twist in the base of the leaf, become arranged in a single series on each side of it. The trees are usually dio3cious : the male flowers are borne on one individual and the female on another, although instances occur in which flowers of both sexes are formed on the same tree. The male flowers are more or less globu lar and occur in the axils of the leaves. They consist of a number of overlapping brownish scales, gradually increasing