cre, and the price of land had risen from four to
twenty-eight roubles per dessyatin.

Reclamation of marshes might be undertaken elsewhere on a much more
moderate scale. The observant traveller on the highways and byways of
the northern provinces must have noticed on the banks of almost every
stream many acres of marshy land producing merely reeds or coarse
rank grass that no well-brought-up animal would look at. With a little
elementary knowledge of engineering and the expenditure of a moderate
amount of manual labour these marshes might be converted into excellent
pasture or even into highly productive kitchen-gardens; but the peasants
have not yet learned to take advantage of such opportunities, and the
reformers, who deal only in large projects and scientific panaceas for
the cure of impoverishment, consider such trifles as unworthy of their
attention. The Scotch proverb that if the pennies be well looked after,
the pounds will look after themselves, contains a bit of homely wisdom
totally unknown to the Russian educated classes.

After the morasses, swamps, and marshes come the forests, constituting
39 per cent. of the whole area, and the question naturally arises
whether some portions of them might not be advantageously transformed
into pasturage or arable land. In the south and east they have been
diminished to such an extent as to affect the climate injuriously, so
that the area of them should be increased rather than lessened; but in
the northern provinces the vast expanses of forest, covering millions
of acres, might perhaps be curtailed with advantage. The proprietors
prefer, however, to keep them in their present condition because they
give a modest revenue without any expenditure of capital.

Therein lies the great obstacle to land-reclamation in Russia: it
requires an outlay of capital, and capital is extremely scarce in the
Empire of the Tsars. Until it becomes more plentiful, the area of arable
land and pasturage is not likely to be largely increased, and other
means of checking the impoverishment of the peasantry must be adopted.

A less expensive means is suggested by the statistics of foreign trade.
In the preceding chapter we have seen that from 1860 to 1900 the average
annual export of grain rose steadily from under 1 1/2 millions to over 6
millions of tons. It is evident, therefore, that in the food supply, so
far from there being a deficiency, there has been a large and constantly
increasing s