346 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



State, communal, and private, — a map which was most interesting. 

 To an Englishman, the first point of remark was that the scale 

 was in English measure, 25 versts to the inch, and this seems to 

 be the usual thing. The colouring of the map showed that, except 

 the forests of the Caucasus, much of the southern half of Russia 

 is bare of forest, the forest area then increasing largely, until in 

 the north, between the parallels of St Petersburg and Archangel, 

 the colouring is almost complete. Much of this forest area must 

 be very far, not only from the coast but even from navigable 

 waterways or railway lines, and thus difficult to work with profit. 

 The chief forest trees are the spruce and Scots pine; but in places, 

 it is interesting to note, there are forests of nearly pure lime 

 trees, worked for bast fibre, bark, boots, and minor industries, such 

 as boxes and baskets. The area of forest in the Russian Empire 

 comes to something under 100,000 square miles. It is hardly 

 unfair to suppose that, in the north especially, much of this forest 

 consists only of stunted, very slowly-growing trees, giving but 

 little timber, and that of small size. 



The preparation of working plans for the Russian forests began 

 in 1840, and already most of the Government forests of the 

 centre and south have been placed under systematic working, 

 while considerable progress is being made in the huge areas of 

 northern Russia and Siberia. The working plans are of the 

 simplest character, chiefly providing for selection fellings on an 

 area basis, the areas being fixed in five-yearly plans of operations. 

 By degrees, no doubt, these arrangements will be modified and 

 improved as experience is gained, but at present fellings are 

 confined to mature trees, up to the calculated amount of the 

 annual yield. So far as is possible, all material is sold standing, 

 so that the conversion and extraction of the produce is made by 

 the purchaser. In addition to the extraction of the principal 

 product, timber, much attention is paid to the economy of refuse 

 material, and the utilisation of trees of the le3s valuable kinds. 

 Thus, in pine woods, the stumps are used for the manufacture 

 of tar and turpentine ; in birch woods, the wood is distilled for 

 the manufacture of acetate of lime and methylated spirit, and 

 the bark is converted into tanning extract, used for preparing 

 Russian leather ; in lime forests, as already mentioned, the 

 bast and bark are utilised, and so on; while the manufacture of 

 resin and turpentine from the Scots pine is, in some provinces, 

 an important industry, whose value may be gauged by the fact 



