Encyclopaedia Britannica > Volume 21, ROT-Siam

Ethno¬
graphy.
78
RUSSIA
irigly corcmcm, as a]so an(j £]ie ^g^. jn ^g jjgp^ . -[)U^
the glutton {Gulo borealis), the lynx, and even the elk (C. aloes)
a£e disappearing. The wild boar is confined to the basin
ot the Inina, and the Bison europea to the Bielovyezha forests,
ihe 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 {roussalc), and also the
grey partridge {Pcrdix cinerea), the hedgehog, the quail, the lark
the rook (Trypanocorax frugilega), and the stork find their way
into the coniferous region as the forests are cleared (Bogdanoffj.
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-
mg 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 Corcqoni
and m Salmonidae generally.
In the Ante-Steppe the forest species proper, such as Pteromvs
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
avi*auna> of course, becomes poorer; nevertheless the woods
ot 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. urogallus).
Ihe 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 msectivores 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 winch have been a scourge to agriculture during recent
years. 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 {Acipenserides). On the Volga
below -Nijni Novgorod the sturgeon {Acipenser ruthenus), 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.2
Prehistoric anthropology is a science of very recent growth in
Kussia; 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
ot Palaeolithic man, contemporary with the large Quaternary
mammals, are few in Russia; they are known only in Poland,
1 ottava, 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
0TimTr anthTPolo?ical features, even at that remote
pe md. _ The Russian plains have 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
w “an£factories °f stone implements, buritl grounds
{koshshchas) of the Bronze epoch, earthen forts [gorodishchas], and
[fauna.
compMeJists oftheT St Petersburg, 1885, gives nearly
f 2 7iog,'aphy-~lhcre being no general recent work published on the fauna
?, AUSSla’^0nla 'naluabIe sketch (for the general reader) by M Bocdanoff in
wnrk'nf epdnX t0vhe RuS,Sum translation 0f Reclus’s Geogr. Univ. v the classical
danoff, Birds and Mammals of the Black-Earth Region of the Vnlaa
lm for the southern Urals; Kessler for fishes; StfaucK^Wat ’
orrepples geneially ; Rodoszkowski and the publications of the Entomolovicai
Kessle[ for tw nf °t ; Czerniavsky for the marine fauna of the Black^Sea •
Kessler fm that of Lakes-Onega and Ladoga; Grimm for the OasniBn- nmi
publications of the scientific societies for a verv areat nnmhpr ' ’ al <* *5®
dealing with departments of the fauna of separate govemmSits seas andlXs®
The fauna of the Baltic provinces is described in full in the of thp
Son^thon^b He itheSC provinces- Middendorff’s Sibirische Raise, vo/ iv
mfomatim, for the Rn«^nrleSPeCially wj,th Sibei'ia> is an invaluable’source of
published at St Petersburg in connexion with the ExhiWUon ol
1/8, and the index Ukazatel Russkoi Biteratury for natural science mathemn
tics, and medicine, published since 1872 by the Society of the Kieff unSty
grave mounds (Aufrpms)—of which last four different types are
known, the earliest belonging to the Bronze period—are superposed
upon and obliterate one another, so that a long series of researches
s necessaiy m 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
fti t tW116 Pen0d) asAarginhabited the Plains of eastern Europe
But they are separated by so many generations from the earliest
- --AT that srTJconch“ regarding them are impossible-
at all events, as yet Russian archfeolegists are not agreed as to
SWl ’61' th<i anaestor1s of the Slavonians were Sarmatians only or
Scythians also (Samokvasoff, Lemiere), whose skulls have nothing
r,0™ Wlth tb0Se1 of tha Mongolian race. The earliest point!
t at can, comparatively speaking, be regarded as settled must thus
be taken from the 1st century, when the Northern Finns migrated
f 0“ the North Dwina region towards the west, and the Sarmatians
Mere compelled to leave the region of the Don, and to cross the
Sb m1 SitePpCS frL°m east t0 ,west> under the pressure of the Aorzes
(the Mordvinian 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
diov e the Bulgarians, descendants of the Huns, from the Don one
section of them migrating up the Volga to found there the Bub
ganan empire, and the remainder migrating towards the Danube
this migration compelled the Northern Finns to advance farther
sw„ei sMr*5 “d «
p.-ob.u/stiU carlie^Ttream of SlS-onian colmfzSio'n'.’aSndng
eastwaid from the Danube, was thrown on the plains of south!
western Russia. It is also most probable that another similar
tin V-7 ihe nortbe™> 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
TW bl?T ^l°n- anC! t \e Central I)lateau in western parts.
Ihey 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
\ olga and Kama ; and to the south-east the Turkish-Mongolian
woidd of the Petchenegs, Potovtsi, Uzes, &c. ; while in the smith
unde! th0 -BlaC^ Sea’ efcV< Cd -he empire of the Khazars, who kept
undei their rule several Slavonian stems, and perhaps also some of
fob^l»- tt1 ?eu9t,h Cent1Ury also the Ngrians 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
7° aCC0Unt,’ and jf w|1add t0 them the Mongolian invasion, the
miration 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
0lfae ^ 7 a latbr period their advance into the
prairies on the Black Sea, driving back the Turkish stems which
occupied them,—if we consider the 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),
t win be seen that, with the exception of some 3,000,000
Ukrainians or Little Russians, in East Galicia and in Poland, and
a lew on the south slope of the Carpathians, the w-hole of the
southeimRussia 0CCUPy’ “ a compact body, western, central, and
Like other races of mankind, the Russian race is not a pure one.
ihe 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-
m thronnWU Sf f ^ thirteen ce.nturies old exhibiting the same
anthropological features as are seen m 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
faceKmVtftl ’ by deep traces sti11 visible in tbe
and n l h7m\later on passmg int0 ^e village community,
Tht ha! °aI}1Zatl0n .being "ar/led on by great compact bodies,
this has all along maintained the same characters. The Russians
vSla^es elTfi[ate 38 U lndlvliduals > they migrate in whole
vervfr;arTd^ff b-elm!?g-n^nbers of the Slavonians, and the
the A^van. lTm63 m ethmcal type’ belief, mythology, between
direefinn and Turanianfl may bave contributed in the same
see tW ’ a v,thr0pgh°Ut tbe wntten history of the Slavonians we
Siberia ’« 1r,e.1 a Russian man, far away from his home among
tbe file ’ AHd!iy mameS 3 natlve> the Russian woman seldom does
rn^ wT n Ab these.causes. and especially the first-mentioned, have
enabled the Slavonians to maintain their ethnical features in a