FORESTRY IN HUNGARY. 37 



plan, the trees are taken as they come, and those recently felled 

 were not more than from sixty to seventy years old. We saw the 

 remains of an old dry slide, made of round timber, and said to be 

 five miles long ; and further on, after passing through a forest 

 where the broad-leaved trees were being cut out, in order to favour 

 the growth of the young spruce under them, we entered a small 

 saw-mill driven by water, the proprietor of which had an excellent 

 set of drawings on the walls of his shed, showing how to cut up 

 logs of various diameters in the most advantageous manner. 



We were now once more approaching the line of water-shed and 

 the Galician frontier, immediately beyond which, among the northern 

 slopes of the Carpathians, are the sources of the Pruth, and we 

 made a short halt at the village of Kdrosmezo. The valley is here 

 wide and fertile, some of the houses being fairly commodious and 

 well built, but most of them are mere hovels. We were taken to 

 see the Russian church, where we were very politely received by 

 the parish priest, and after breakfast were driven on by the forest 

 officer in charge of the division, in his own carriage, drawn by a 

 first-rate pair of horses. We passed through the village market, 

 and then, after stopping to examine a shed for drying spruce seed, 

 we traversed a forest where fourteen years ago the trees were all 

 blown down. It happened to be a very good seed year, and the 

 result has been that there is now an excellent crop of young, self- 

 sown spruce on the ground ; but such good fortune is not often 

 experienced. About this part of the valley there were immense 

 quantities of windfalls. It might, indeed, almost be said that the 

 wind both regulates the fellings and executes them ; for on account 

 of the enormous number of trees blown down, the regular fellings 

 provided for in the working plan can seldom be carried out. We 

 looked over a nursery of spruce and silver fir, with some Scots 

 pine and larch. The silver fir, which cannot be raised out in the 

 open, can only be grown in localities where natural regeneration by 

 means of successive fellings can be practised. 



Our attention was next called to a " river slide," constructed for 

 passing the rafts over a steep rocky part of the river. The entire 

 bed and sides of the stream were lined with fir poles, laid length- 

 wise, the bottom being formed in broad low steps, over which the 

 rafts pass to the foot of the huge staircase thus formed. At the 

 lower end of the structure there is a deep pool, on which the last 

 step floats, hinged by chains to its predecessor. When the rafts are 

 shot down on to this floating platform or table, which "gives" 



