69S The Jonriial of Forestry. 



the city, has been reduced within tlie last thirty years from 12,000 

 hectares to 7,500, one-third of which is clearings. 



So far as authentic data are procurable, it appears that Turkey in 

 Europe must still contain at least 1,425,000 licdarcs (three and a half 

 million English acres) of forest and woodlands. 



The varieties of timber are not numerous, but what there are are 

 valuable. As a rule, the larger flora of European Turkey differs bat 

 little from that of Western Europe, and amongst the n\imerous shrubs 

 which flourish luxuriantly on low, warm sites, and which include the 

 myrtle, citron, orange, olive, rose, &c., are very few but may be 

 found in similar localities in the South of France. 



Forest vegetation exhibits four zones, wdiich now are very iuiper- 

 fectly defined, varying much in their vertical limits in different 

 localities, and even in the same locality with different aspects. 



1. The oak (chiefly the peduncled and sessile-flowered varieties) 

 and the chestnut rise, the former to an altitude of 3,200 feet, and the 

 latter to about 2,600 feet. 



2. The beeches are found, according to the locality, up to altitudes 

 of 2,000 to 5,000 feet. 



3. Eesiniferous species — firs, larches, scarlet and Austrian pines, 

 &c., are generally found between 2,600 and 6,200 feet above the sea 

 level. In the Despotodagh —the ancient Ehodope — are still large 

 forests of pines intermixed with firs, crowning the highest summits 

 of Olympus, as probably they did when Euripides applied to it the 

 epithet " many-treed." Here, 6,700 feet above the level of the ^gean 

 Sea, is the highest woodland observed in Turkey in Europe. 



4. The evergreen oak, the Judas tree, and a variety of noble 

 arborescent shrubs, mingled with some woods of Aleppo pine, cover 

 (where they have been spai ed) the low hills bordering the ^gean and 

 part of the Sea of Marmora. On the Black Sea shores peduncled 

 and sessile-flowered oaks are found at all altitudes, coming down 

 nearly to the water's edge. The oak, the tree par excellence of the 

 Balkans, within its own vertical limits may be said to be the pre- 

 dominating forest growth everywhere in European Turkey. 



Several distinct classes of property are recognised in Turkey in 

 respect of standing timber. 



First, thei'e are the woods known as I'oroiis. These beloug to private 

 persons or village communities, both the land and the timber on it 

 being private property. 



Next come the State forests properly so called, which have been 

 specially assigned to the use of some particular branch of the public 

 service, as the Kavy or the Ordnance. Then there are the haltaliks, 

 woods of which a right of usufruct belongs, by ancient custom, to 

 particular villages, the land remaining the property of the State. A 



