400 The yoiirnal of Forestry. 



remarked that witli the axe the Eussian carpenter does ahnost every- 

 thing ; it answers the purpose of saw, hammer, and plane. The 

 interior of the izla presents two compartments, the principal 

 dwelling-room and the Melt, or summer chamber, which are joined 

 together under the same roof by a passage called the sanec. 

 The kleit is usually built higher than the dwelling-room, which 

 admits of sufficient space underneath for keeping a cow or two 

 &c. The most prominent object in this chamber is the ^aysch, or 

 liussian stove, on top of which the family sleep in the winter. 

 We may here mention an article of enormous composition, viz., 

 boxes, some of them as large as clothes chests, bound with iron 

 straps or bands. 



They are made of pine or fir, and have sometimes a looking-glass 

 inside the lid. They are made principally in the villages of the 

 governments of Perm, Viatka, Nijni-Novgorod, and Vladimir, and are 

 sold mostly at the fair of Nijui-ISTovgorod, one fitting exactly into 

 the other in eight different sizes. 



Another article which is manufactured in enormous quantities 

 by the peasantry in the villages, and for which wood is employed, 

 are the ikonas, or " holy pictures." There is not a peasant's izla 

 without one stuck up in the corner of the room. Some idea may be 

 formed of the great demand for these pictures when we consider 

 the enormous peasant population of Parssia. One of the prin- 

 cipal centres of the manufacture of these ikonas is the village of 

 Kholui in the Viasnikoff district of the province of Vladimir. 

 The pictures are painted on boards of lime, alder, aspen, pine, and 

 fir, and a few on cypress wood, and are brought over the Volga to 

 the village about Christmas-time to the extent of from 40 to 200 

 sledge-loads per week. The artist-peasant of Kholui works on these 

 "holy pictures" from early infancy to old age; he uses his brush like 

 a machine without the least artistic taste, consequently his products 

 are of the roughest description, for he has to work hard and very 

 rapidly to earn anything like a livelihood. Some of these " artists " 

 are able to paint the drapery of GOO ikonas per week, others to finish 

 the 600 heads of the same in the same short space of time. The 

 price of these fixtures is very low, something like 6s. per 100. In 

 the village of Kholui alone from a million to a million and a half 

 of these ikonas are manufactured yearly. They are brought up by 

 the ofenes, or itinerant wholesale dealers, in hundreds of cart-loads, 

 and are carried by them for sale to every corner of the vast Ptussian 

 empire. 



Wood is extensively employed for the construction of rafts, upon 

 which on some rivers produce is floated down stream and of the so- 

 called harkas. This is also a rustic industry. The harka is a kind of 



