FOREST EXPLOITATION. 149 



if there be a probability of its being re-sown or otherwise 

 restocked with trees. 



A similar account was given to me of the cutting of 

 fuel for a smelting furnace in the government of Oren- 

 burg. Thirty years was deemed sufficient for the repro- 

 duction and growth of the firewood, and the whole was 

 divided into thirty equivalent portions, each of which was 

 allotted for one year's exploitation in the expectation that 

 in thirty years it would be reproduced. Strips were the 

 forms in which the several portions were laid out, and 

 these, so far as was practicable, were made to converge 

 towards the forge ; and in felling each a strip was left 

 unfelled for the production of seed for the natural re-sow- 

 ing of the portion cleared. My informant stated that the 

 strip left was either one-sixth or one-twelfth of the 

 breadth of the strip cleared he could not recollect which. 

 I think it probable it was left at the side, and that those 

 of two contiguous ridges were contiguous, whereby they 

 might be conjointly one-sixth of the breadth of one cleared 

 strip, but one-twelfth of the two if the fellings did not 

 follow each other in due succession. 



Advantages likely to follow such a method of managing 

 forests suggest themselves at once, and, as described, it 

 seems to be one which must be of easy application any- 

 where. But the practical forester who has given atten- 

 tion to my statement may have remarked that I have 

 used the expression equal or equivalent portions. Good 

 will result from the adoption of division into equal 

 portions much good, but with a large admixture of evil. 

 Equal portions are not necessarily equivalent portions, 

 and such is the variation in the productiveness of different 

 portions of a forest, from variation in soil, in exposure, 

 and in adaptation to the growth of the kind of tree which 

 happens to be upon it, that it is very improbable that 

 many portions equal in extent will be equal in produc- 

 tiveness, if any at all happen to be so ; and therefore the 

 division of a forest into equal portions will not yield 



