uel, while the mercury
registered 30 degrees Reaumur below freezing-point. The unfortunate
citizens heated their homes with fragments of hoardings, tables, desks
and stools. And yet there is abundant fuel in the superb forests with
which Vyatka is surrounded, and, what is more to the point, the city
authorities had received during the preceding spring 60,000 roubles
for the purpose of purchasing a supply of wood for the winter. But
they did nothing, organization not being one of their strong points.

[129] The German press welcomes items of information like
this. Cf. _Frankfurter Zeitung_, January 13, 1916.

Live stock in Russia has diminished during the war to a much larger
extent than was anticipated. The peasantry, owing to the prohibition
of alcohol, now consume from 150 to 200 per cent. more meat than
before, and what with the refugees from Poland, the prisoners of war
and the increased needs of the army, no less than 20 per cent. of the
cattle of the entire Empire was used during the first eighteen
months[130] and 30 per cent. of the stock of all European Russia. In
consequence of the shortage and of the irregularity of the transport,
three days of abstinence from meat were ordained. Yet in January 1916
a discovery was casually made in the Kieff forests between Byelitch
and Pushtsha Voditzka, which caused considerable lifting of the
eyebrows. About 8000 head of cattle and several thousand sheep were
found with no cowherds, shepherds or owners, wandering about from
place to place. Scores of them were succumbing to hunger and cold
every day. The paths in the woods were covered with the dead bodies of
kine, calves and sheep. The journal which records this fact affirms
that these herds belong to the Union of Zemstvos, which had purchased
them from the peasants who had to flee from the occupied provinces.
The President of the Union of Zemstvos is said to have confirmed this
odd story with the qualification that the forlorn horned cattle and
sheep are the property not of the Union of Zemstvos, but of the
Ministry of Agriculture, which is alone answerable.[131]

[130] Over a hundred million head.

[131] Cf. the Russian journal, _Kieff_, also the _Frankfurter
Zeitung_, January 29, 1916.

The card system of distributing provisions that are scarce found its
way first into Germany and then into Austria and Russia. But in the
last-named empire it was much less successful than in the two first
mention