290 Earon de Brincken's Memoir on the 



mill nor glass-house ; seldom is any man met with on the road ; 

 and in the innermost recesses of the forest not even the art of 

 the wood-cutter is put in practice. There is even a district of 

 15,000 acres, or nearly two square miles, which bears the name 

 of " Niezeanorv,'''' that is the " UnTmown region^'' because it is 

 rendered quite impassable from the multitude of trunks of trees 

 rooted up and crossing one another in all directions. These 

 wilds are peopled by a great variety of wild animals, such as 

 the aurochs, elks, boars, roes, beavers, bears, lynxes, and 

 wolves. 



European culture and rational forestry have had no influence 

 on this forest. The Scotch pine (Pinus sylvestris), which in 

 the north of Europe extends from Lat. 51° to 70°, covers four- 

 fifths of the surface of the wood, where the sand predominates ; 

 it is the principal tree, as in all the Sarmatian plains. Next to 

 it is the silver-fir (P. picea, DuroiJ, which principally thrives 

 on cold, heavy, and marshy soil, where it attains to the most 

 advanced age, without becoming sickly or porous, and differs in 

 this from what is observed in southern Europe. The silver-fir 

 in the forest of Bialowieza only grows in these its favourite 

 soils, and by the sides of streams. The entire absence of larches 

 and common spruce firs (P. Larix h Abies, DuroiJ is the more 

 extraordinary, as these two species are not only found in other 

 parts of Poland on a soil with exactly the same constitution, 

 but also in 60° and 70° North Lat., in the governments of Arch- 

 angel and Tobolsk. The larch, which is now seldom seen in 

 Poland intermixed with the Scotch pine, was formerly much 

 more abundant. The common spruce is still pretty frequent, 

 and now and then forms whole forests ; but in Poland the larch 

 and spruce do not reach higher than the 52° of Lat., which is 

 in accordance with the statements of Count Plater. According 

 to this author, in the middle region of Poland, there occur 

 either isolated, or collected into small groups, the Pinus Larix, 

 P. Abies (Duroi.), Fagus sylvatica, Quercus pedunculata, Acer 

 platanoides, Fraxinus excelsior, and Tilia grandifolia. In 

 the wild districts, all these species are to be met with, partly in 

 families, and partly mixed with one another, as oaks and beeches 

 in patches of considerable extent. The spruce fir is common 

 on the Jura limestone ; the silver-fir on clay-slate in the moun- 



