110 THE FOBEST QUESTION IN BUSSIA. [Dec, 



THE FOBEST QUESTION IN BUSSIA. 



^HE problem of checking the hitherto practically unhindered 

 destruction of what, in a very true sense, may be called 

 the national forests of liussia, is at length in a fair way 

 of receiving definite solution at the hands of the Government. In 

 some other countries of Europe the cry of ' Woodman, spare that 

 tree,' is little more than a mere appeal to bucolic sentiment ; in 

 Itussia it is the expression of a grave economical anxiety — of a sense 

 of the peril threatened to interests of really vast importance for the 

 future development of the Empire. Nor is legislation on the subject 

 at all new. Peter the Great was the first to recognise by enactment 

 the prospective value of the arboreal treasures of his realm, and 

 suceeeding Emperors have nearly all of them done something in 

 ' improvement ' of the forest laws ; yet, somehow or other, the tree- 

 feller has for decades past been wandering about at his own sweet 

 will. That his previous activity represents a certain amount of 

 industrial necessity as its exciting cause hiust be admitted. Russia 

 sends her forests abroad to the extent of exports of wood reaching the 

 value of over thirty millions of roubles annually. Then there is the 

 vastly more important home consumption to be taken into account. 

 Lack of stone throws the countiy almost wholly upon wood for its 

 building materials ; and how often these have to be renewed is tolerably 

 well shown by the saying that Eussia is burnt down every seven 

 years. Nor is the Empire much better furnished with coal mines than 

 with quarries. The pits worked in Poland, in Central Ptussia, and in 

 the region of the Donetz, hardly supply for the purposes of national 

 industry the three-hundredth part of the yield of the mines of Great 

 Britain, while St. Petersburg still has to go on drawing its coal 

 supplies from England. Eussia is thus practically dependent for the 

 carrying on of most of her industrial operations upon her forests. 

 Factory and workshop development in recent years has caused the 

 conversion of wood into fuel to attain proportions never before reached. 

 It is calculated that the beet-root factories have alone consumed 10,000- 

 dessiatines of forests. The railway locomotive is another great 

 devourer, and even the steamboat only spares the forest when it plies 

 in the vicinity of the naplitha springs. What the domestic stove 

 (pech) turns into smoke and flame every year is a quantity almost too 

 vast to be calcidated. Yet all these sources of drain may fairly be 

 called legitimate. M. Eeclus thinks Eussia has a greater wealth in 

 coal than any other country in Europe ; but while the combustible 

 treasures remain liidden the cheaper firing material cannot be given 



