22 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Hungarian commerce. There are in the kingdom 499 dealers in 

 timber, 1601 in firewood, 25 in tanning bark, 221 in charcoal, and 

 36,798 carpenters, cartwrights, caskniakers, turners, parquet makers, 

 and others. The sixty principal wood merchants have an average 

 capital of over X8000, some of them having as much as £80,000 ; 

 eighty others have an average capital of £4000. Some of these 

 dealers buy the trees standing in the forest, which is the system 

 most frequently employed, though it is considered to be prejudicial 

 to regeneration, and they cut them up into logs ; others buy the 

 logs, and convert them into boards and scantlings, which they 

 dispose of generally to a lower class of dealers, with small capital, 

 who retail them to the consumers. Although the sale of timber 

 standing in the forest is largely practised, a considerable proportion 

 of that from the State forests is sold in depots, to which it is taken 

 either by departmental agency or by a contractor; and it is there 

 sold, ordinarily by auction but sometimes by private contract, to 

 one or more of the principal merchants, who pay for it at first class 

 or second class rates, according as the dejDot is within or beyond 

 12 kilometres, or 7 J miles, from a certain point fixed upon for this 

 jiurpose in each district. 



The railways require 1| millions of slee^jers a year ; and, 

 together with the Danube Steam Navigation Company, use wood 

 to the amount of nearly 21 million cubic feet. There are 2533 

 mines, smelting furnaces, and manufactories, consuming wood, 

 which among them take annually about — 



4,270,000 bushels of charcoal. 

 14,772,000 cubic feet of firewood. 

 2,971,000 ,, mine props. 



1,230,000 ,, scantlings. 



124,000 „ planks. 



The annual export of coal is 2,362,000 tons, and the mean 

 imports and exports of coal and coke during the three years, from 

 1882 to 1884, have been— 



Tons. Value. 



Imports, 370,715 £313,069 



^-M'"rts, 75,523 ' 26,904 



Imports in excess, . . . 295,192 £286,165 



The manufacture of iron, which is very largely developed in 

 Hungary, consumes large quantities of wood in the form of 

 charcoal. On an average, 157,000 tons of iron are manufactured 



