Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 18.djvu/167

* SIAMESE TWINS. 129 SIBERIA. end of one breast-bone to the same place in the oppositu twin. See Monstkosity. SIANG-TAN, sy;ing't:in'. A prefectural city of Cliina in Jiu-nan, on the Siang River, in latitude 27° 52' N., longitude 112° 42' E. (llap: China, DO). It is a small city, but has exten- sive suburbs which stretch along the hank of the river for two miles. It is the commercial centre of Hu-nan. and is the resort of merchants from all parts of the country. It lies on one of the great water routes from Peking to Canton, only 30 miles of portage being necessary. The navigation of the river is now open to foreign vessels, and Sianetan may be reached by craft drawing five feet.' Population, 100,000. SIANG-YANG-FU, syiing'yang'foo' (the Haiaiifti of Marco Polo). A departmental city of the Province of Hu-peh, China, pleasantly situ- ated on tlie right bank of the river Han, about 100 miles north-northeast of I-chang (Map: China, D 5). It is in itself of no commercial im- portance, its suburb Fan-ching on the opposite bank of the river absorbing all the business, which is very great. Siang-yang and Fan-ching are both noted foi the determined resistance they offered to the besieging armies of Kublai Khan in 12f)S-7.3, siirrendering only when Marco Polo's father and uncle came to the assistance of the Mongols with mangonels. Population, .50,000. SIBALON, se'Ba-lon'. A town of Panay, Philippines, in the Province of Antique, situ- ated '.) miles northeast of Buenavista. Popula- tion, estimated, in 1899, 11,675. SIBAWAIHI, se'ba-vl'he. The current name of Abfi Bishr 'Amu ilin' Uthman ibn Kaubr, an Arabic grammarian of the eighth century. He was a Persian, and stiidied at Basra. He returned to Persia and died near Shiraz in 793 or 796. His Kitab (i.e. book) is the oldest systematic presen- tation of Arabic grammar, and remains the clas- sic study of the subject. Derenbovu-g has pub- lished tiie text of his work in Le liore de Slba- uailil (Paris, 1881-89), and it has been trans- lated, along with Arabic commentaries, by .Jahn, in i^lbdiraihi's Bitch iiber die Grammatik (Berlin, 1894). SIBBALD'S WHALE, or Bute Whale. A rorqual { ISalaiioptrra tiibbaldi), the largest known whale, which reaches a length of 85 feet or more, and exceeds in bulk not only all other whales, but all other known animals living or ex- tinct. lAke other rorquals, it passes most of the year in the open ocean, wandering into every sea, but early in summer ajiproaches northern coasts for the purpose of reproduction. At this time its sole food is a small schizopod crustacean (Euphausia), similar to the opossum shrimp, which swarms in the North Atlantic. This whale is dark bluish-gray in color, with w^hitish spots on the breast and black baleen. See Whale. SIBE'EIA. An Asiatic possession of Russia, embracing more than one-half of the area of the entire Empire. It is bounded by Russia in Europe, the Arctic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, the Chinese Empire, and Russian Central Asia. The area is about 4.830.000 square miles, or more than one and one-half times as great as that of the United States (exclusive of Alaska). The region is divided politically into Western Siberia. Eastern Siberia, and the Amur and Maritime Provinces. While Western and Eastern Siberia (Siljcria proper) have been in the possession of Russia for some centuries, and aliout !tO per cent, of their population is of Russian origin, the Anuir lands and the southern part of the littoral (Pacific coast) were not detached from China till 1858, and include as yet only a comparatively small numlier of Russians. TopooRAPHY. Excei)ting in the Amur basin and the immediate region of the mountains the whole country slopes gently from south to north, carrying the drainage to the Arctic Ocean. Most of tlie Arctic coast is low and Hat, and, unlike most Arctic shores, it is little intersected with bays and fiords. The only region of consideral)le elevation appears to be the Taimyr Peninsula, with its low mountain ranges roughly paralleling the coast. The Hat Arctic plain (tundra) crosses the Arctic Circle south of the mouth of the Ob River, and in the great northeastern peninsula of Asia and everywhere else merges into the swamp lands or the forests south of it. No glacial cov- ering is found in Arctic Siberia, for the reason that the precipitation is too snurll for large year- ly accumulations of snow. A peculiar feature is that the soil is perpetually frozen to great depths, the frost extending beneath the surface, near the pole of cold, east of the Lena River, to a depth of 650 feet. Intervening in this frozen soil are layers of clear blue ice, called ground ice. It is in this frozen mass that the remains of mam- moths and other animals have been kept intact probably ever since the time of the great glacial epoch. The surface thaws in summer, covering the northern regions with almost impassable mud. The coast lands of the Pacific frontage, on the contrary, are fringed by high forest-clad mountain ranges approaching so near the sea that little opportunity is given for deep indentations, and there are long stretches of comparatively straight shore line. Siberia has only a few isl- ands of much importance, the new Siberian group of the Arctic and the large Saghalien Island in the Pacific being most noteworthy. The sur- rounding seas are very shallow, usually for a long distance from the land. South of the Arctic region the Yenisei River divides Siberia into two parts whose characteristics differ greatly. The region to the west, or nearly the whole of Western Siberia, consists of vast level plains, al- most completely covered in the northwest with one of the most extensive swamp regions of the world, in which many rivers wind their slug- gish and very tortuous courses. The region of swampy lands embraces nearly all of the Gov- ernment of Tobolsk and the northern part of Tomsk : and scattered through the swamp area and thickly sown over the southern plains are thousands of lakes, most of them very small, relics of the ice age. The eastern part of Tomsk belongs in its topographic aspects to East- ern Siberia, which strikingly contrasts with most of the region west of the Yenisei. As Western Siberia is a land of low swamps, plains, and lakes, so Eastern Siberia to the Pa- cific, especially in the south, is a land of low plateaus sloping gradually to the Arctic and surmoimted by many ranges of mountains, most of them not high, but giving the country a very rugged character. The ranges have a gener.al northeast and northwest direction, following the trend of the backbone or central feature of the region — the chain known as the Yablonoi and