650 Forestry Quarterly. 



Mongolia will probably play no part whatsoever in the timber 

 trade either in importing foreign material, except possibly from 

 across the Siberian border, or as a source of supply for China 

 Proper. The same will be true of Thibet and Chinese Turkestan. 

 Manchuria is reputed to contain large amounts of timber, but so 

 far has supplied its timber needs by importing from Japan, the 

 United States, and Siberia; and it is quite likely that the timber 

 is confined to the eastern portion — in the Yalu River drainage 

 basin, and in the far north in the Upper Amur basin — and that it 

 will probably not be a very large factor in supplying anything but 

 its own needs, as even if that timber becomes open to lumbering 

 the development within the province itself will probably be more 

 rapid and will consume all the timber produced. If timber is to 

 be imported from foreign countries into Manchuria, it will be 

 Japanese and Korean timber, so that it will have but little interest 

 to any other countries. 



Coming down then to The Eighteen Provinces proper, a brief 

 survey of the conditions is found below. This description, as also 

 the above, is taken from a book entitled "The Provinces of China," 

 by Polikon. 



China proper stretches from Nainan and Canton in the torrid 

 south to Peking and the Great Wall in the frigid north. Longi- 

 tudinally China proper stretches from the high western borders 

 of Thibet to the delta of the mighty Yangtse Kiang. This area of 

 over a million and a third square miles is most conveniently 

 divided up for us by nature into three parts, each the basin of a 

 river. The northern portion consists of all the country in the 

 basin of the Huang Ho (Ho River), with an estimated area of 

 390,000 square miles and a population of ninety-five million souls. 

 This region is one of loess and alluvial lands, and therefore very 

 fertile when there is abundant rain, but liable to famine in case 

 of drought. The region is dominated by the "Yellow River," or 

 "China's Sorrow." The provinces in this basin are Kansu, 

 Shensi, Shansi, Honan, Chihli and Shantung. The second region 

 is that of the basin of the Yangtse, the great central waterway of 

 China. In this region lie the provinces of Szechw'an, Hunan, 

 Hupeh, Kiangsi, Anhwei, and Kiangsu. This basin is the richest, 

 the largest, the most populous, the most favored, of the three 

 great divisions of China; and the great central artery of com- 



