erable in roads and railway,
electric, telephonic, and postal communication. BANGKOK (q. v.)
is the capital. In 1893 a large tract of territory NE. of the Mekhong was
ceded to France.

SIAMESE TWINS, twins born in Siam, of Chinese parents, whose bodies
were united by a fleshy band extended between corresponding breast-bones;
were purchased from their mother and exhibited in Europe and America,
realised a competency by their exhibitions, married and settled in the
States; having lost by the Civil War, they came over to London and
exhibited, where they died, one 21/2 hours after the other (1811-1874).

SIBBALD, SIR ROBERT, physician and naturalist, born in Edinburgh, of
Balgonie, Fife; established a botanic garden in Edinburgh, and was one of
the founders of the Royal College of Physicians (16411712).

SIBERIA (5,000), a vast Russian territory in North Asia (one and a
third times the size of Europe), stretching from the Ural Mountains (W.)
to the seas of Behring, Okhotsk, and Japan (E.), bounded on the N. by the
Arctic Ocean and on the S. by China and the Central Asiatic provinces of
Russia; forms in the main an immense plain, sloping from the Altai and
other mountain ranges on the S. to the dreary, ice-bound littoral on the
N., drained by the northward-flowing Obi, Irtish, Yenesei, Lena, &c.,
embracing every kind of soil, from the fertile grain-growing plains of
the S. and rich grazing steppe-land of the W. to the forest tracts and
bogland of the N. and experiencing a variety of climates, but for the
most part severely cold; hunting, fishing, and mining are the chief
industries, with agriculture and stock-raising in the S. and W. The great
Trans-Siberian Railway, in construction since 1891, is opening up the
country, which is divided into eight "governments," the chief towns being
Tomsk, Irkutsk, Omsk, and Tobolsk; three-fifths of the population are
Russians, chiefly exiles and descendants of exiles. Russian advance in
Asia against the Tartars was begun in 1850, and was carried on by warlike
Cossack marauders, followed by hunters, droves of escaping serfs, and
persecuted religious sects.

SIBYL, name given to a woman, or rather to a number of women, much
fabled of in antiquity, regarded by Ruskin as representing the voice of
God in nature, and, as such, endowed with visionary prophetic power, or
what in the Highlands of Scotland is called "second-sight"; the most
famous of the class being the Sibyl of Cumae, w