THE CZAR'S EMPIRE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11757, 22 July 1916, Page 8

THE CZAR'S EMPIRE.

WHAT RUSSIA LOOKS USE.

• "In Prince Serge Volkonski's interesting Lowell lectures, ' Pictures of Russian History and Russian Literature,' he tells the following characteristic anecdotes," Maurice Baring writes in "The Russian People": ' I remember an American girl who frankly confessed that she did not like Russian books representing Russian life; she thought the things tbey pictured were not original enough, lacking "local colour"; she much preferred English novels about Russia, they were so much, more ''Russian." This is characteristic."' Mr Baaing, after picturing Russia as he, and most other people who have never been there, had pictured it, givejs us some glimpses of what it really looks like. He describes. for instance, walking out one afternoon from a small provincial town where the annual meeting of the county council for the district was being held, with at Russian friend. "Just as we reached the outskirts of the town," he says, " and we looked round on the landscape, we both said, ]y, 'What a typical Russian scene 1'" " " It was an autumn day in late October. The sky was cloudless and of a light transparent blue, clear and dazzling. So clear was the atmosphere that the distant features of the landsenpo were as distinct as they are m a kodak photograph. The view had the sharpness of a photograph. We were standing on a wooden bridge which stretched over a narrow and utr terly sluggish brown river; the banks were of shelving sand, and you had to go down some wooden stops to reach the farther side. On one side of the river, and about thirty vaxds from it, was the town, standing on level ground; on tho other side of it the level country stretched out into the distance, a flait, dark-brown plain, cut by a road:. '"What you saw of the town was, on the right, a large cathedral, the fourth biggest in Russia: the style was Palladian, I suppose, that is to say, it. had a. front of five large Corinthian pillars supporting a pediment, and it dome; walls, dome, and pillars were all whitewashed. A little further to the left, of it and beyond it was another church, which had a white spire and a round cupola painted ultramarineblue. Round the church was an open space, and then along the river began the line of houses which formed tho limit of the town. They were low,, two-storeyed homes, most of them, some

built of bricks and whitewashed, And some built of wood. The corner house of the street, which ended where the open square in which the cathedral stood began, was a barracks, two storeyedj of a dun colour and built of stone. The road in front of tho house was sandy, dusty and brown.

" On the other side of the river the houses were few and straggling, and belonged to poor people. They had but one storey and were built of logs placed horizontally one on the top of the other, and were roofed with iron, but on the right of the road was a larger house, painted white, with a tall chimney, from which tho 6moko proceeded; this was a factory of some kind. Next to it was a tall, vrocd&n. windmill;.one of its four fans had been broken off and was - missing. in the distance, on the horizon of tha plain, you could seo a bare brown wood. "As we leant over the bridge wo observed at the foot on the left bank of the river, a raft, and on it, a littla wooden house with windows and a Sai roof; on the raft a whole bevy or women, in coloured prints, were waehing their linen. Five or six soldiers were looking on. The soldiers had got on their dun-coloured, rough-stuff groy coats; some of them were bringing bundles of linen to. be washed; othara were chaffing the washerwomen." "There was not a sound in the air, except the splash made by the washing. And then from the plain, the dusty, rutty road, a whole line or flat carts creaked along, one in front of the other, five of the foremost being without drivers; all of these carts wero full of sacks. Alongside the sixth -walked the owner, a- bearded peasant, dressed in a brown leather and vci'y dirty coat lined with sheepskin. And every now and then he influenced t!|o march of the line of carts by shoutir® a word to the horses. Not long afior this, the line of carts cros&*J tho Viiufiyj and turned into the town ana ino creaking died away in the distance: ti-o lazy stillness fell upon the plaoa Onco more: and so great was that stillne?? that the whole landscape seemed lika a coloured slide of a magic lantern."

Messrs Barker and Gimingham, oi the University of Bristol, have investigated a, mysterious "scorching" of th a foliage of ap-pie trees, which was at (irst thought to bo due to a fungus vv to injury by spraying. It was found, however, "to be the result of friction V,ctwoeu adjacent leaves, the rough of one leaf irritating the cells of another and developing a purplish discoloration which Later turned brown, irfcvi up and presented the typical scorched ,appearance. The writer suggests tfcv-. much- of the injury heretofore r. r cnb?j, to spray mixture mr,y reailj be tho F suit of wind action.