182 SUPPLIES OF TIMBER FROM ABROAD. [Jan. 



required for the maturing of its timber is at least twenty years 

 shorter than in the north of Sweden and Finland, it must injure the 

 productive powers of the forests ; unless an advance of price enables 

 railways to be more generally used than at present to get forward 

 wood lying outside of floating limits. 



Of the Eussian White Sea supplies, as is well known, the red 

 fir supplied by the provinces of Archangel and Vologda is the most 

 valuable softwood imported by us from any European source. The 

 quantity of sawn wood exported from this district is a mere tithe 

 of what the forests in the two provinces referred to are capable of 

 supplying, if ordinary commercial facilities were provided at the 

 different ports, proper inducements afforded by the Eussian Govern- 

 ment for the exploitation of the forests, and the improvement of the 

 waterways from the interior to the coast. The total shipment of 

 the whole White Sea basin is under 200,000 loads annually of 

 sawn and dressed wood, of which about four-iifths come to the 

 United Kingdom. The forest area of the Governments of Archangel 

 and Vologda is estimated at no less than 197,000,000 English 

 acres, or more than three times that of Sweden and Norway 

 together. 



Germany alone of the other European countries supplies us witli 

 any large quantity of wood ; and that is principally hewn oak and fir 

 from Memel, Dantzig, and Stettin, in addition to an increasing supply 

 of sleepers and mining timber. Of the 270,000 loads of hewn 

 wood received annually therefrom, probably more than half is 

 originally grown in the Polish provinces of Eussia, and as the 

 latter Government has done its utmost of late years to divert 

 this traffic to Eiga, Libau, and the Black Sea, with a certain 

 measure of success, there is but little hope of our receiving 

 augmented supplies of the woods indicated from North - East 

 Germany in future. The fiscal policy of the German Government 

 restricts the importation of Swedish and Eussian wood in Ger- 

 many, and aims at so enhancing the price of local produce, for 

 the benefit of German landowners, as will make it increasingly 

 difficult for German exporters to compete with the large-dimen- 

 sioned pitch pine and oak from North America. 



It has become the fashion, both in the United States and Canada, 

 to represent the supply of timber as within very few years of final 

 exhaustion. Now without setting any definite period for the ex- 

 liaustion of the yclloiv jmie (called white pine in America) and red 

 pine of Canada and the North- Western States of the Union, has not 

 the local demand for these woods become so great, that only the 

 most inferior grades of the same will be sent us ? In fact, the 

 markets of this country have reflected this view of the case for 



