Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/368

352, of which 94,188,750 were assigned to Russia in Europe, and the density of the population had risen to fifty-one to the square mile. The returns of Russia in Asia are naturally imperfect, but the census of 1897 gave 23,052,000 souls, and the density of population about four to the square mile. For the whole empire the density is fifteen souls to the square mile. This low figure is due to Siberia, where only 1.2 marks the population to the square mile, and to central Asia, which gave only 5.6 to the same territory. Poland is the most densely settled (one hundred and ninety-two to the square mile), and Caucasia does not greatly differ from the average for European Russia (53.3 to the square mile). If these figures be compared with the returns of the United States census it will be seen that European Russia has more than twice the density of population of the United States (21.3); that Poland is as thickly settled as New Jersey (193.8), and that New Mexico equals Siberia in sparseness of inhabitants.

The estimates of land under cultivation in European Russia have become more correct of late years, through the intelligent application of statistical methods by the Government. In 1850 it was believed that about eighteen per cent of the area (exclusive of Poland and Finland) was under cultivation, and of this cultivated portion nine acres in every ten were under grain. Accepting these official figures, the area devoted to grain would have been 219,569,000 acres. From 1850 to 1860 the cultivated ground increased by one tenth, and nearly the entire increase was devoted to grain. The social conditions introduced by the emancipation of the serf checked this development after 1860 in the northern and central government of the empire, but stimulated the settlement and cultivation of the more southern provinces—the black-earth region. The progress as a whole was small, for the gain of one region hardly overcame the loss of another, and in 1870 the figures gave an increase of only 1.5 per cent in the area of plowed land over the returns of 1860. After 1870 the rate of progression again rose, and in 1880 nearly ten per cent more land was in cultivation than in 1870. Again accepting the official figures, the area of tilled land was about 540,000,000 acres in 1880.

In that year nearly sixty per cent of this area was in the "blackearth" zone, a vast and rich arable plain, extending across the empire from the southwest corner (Podolia) to the Ural Mountains, and even reappearing in Siberia. This is one of the largest sections of fertile lands on the globe, and its pre-eminence arises from the decomposition through centuries of accumulated steppe grasses, and the shelter afforded by the outlying forests. "It owes its name to a layer of black humus, varying in thickness from, on the average.