148 FORESTRY IN EASTERN RUSSIA. 



number of decades in the age at which the trees are to be 

 felled ; these sections are subdivided into lots, and the 

 required supply of wood is obtained from the clearing of 

 specified lots, and the first, second, or third of succes- 

 sive thinnings to which other specified lots are subjected 

 with the result that there is secured simultaneously an 

 improved condition of the forest a sustained production 

 of firewood or timber and a natural reproduction of the 

 forest from self-sown seed. 



The success which has accompanied the exploitation of 

 some forests here, in accordance with the now antiquated 

 and superseded method known as a tire et aire, I consider 

 to be attributable to one or more probably in part to 

 each of the following conditions under which it has been 

 practised : 



1. An efficient and sufficent protection of the forests 

 against waste and theft ; 



2. Most of the reproduced wood being the produce of 

 fresh growth from old stumps, and only a small portion 

 of it the produce of the growth of seedlings ; and 



3. The annual demand not being in excess of the annual 

 production of wood. 



While I thus classify the conditions under which I con- 

 sider that the results have been obtained, I know that the 

 classification is open to the objections first, that what has 

 been stated last covers what goes before, and a great deal 

 besides ; and secondly, that it is virtually a truism or 

 restatement of the case in altered phraseology. But it is 

 nevertheless the case that elsewhere waste and theft have 

 helped to prevent like success being obtained ; that a cycle 

 appropriate to trees which send out shoots from stumps 

 may be sufficient to secure reproduction, while a similar 

 cycle would be insufficient to secure full reproduction of 

 the same or other kinds of trees from seed. And it is 

 probable that in many cases in which this method of 

 exploitation failed it might have proved efficient if a more 

 lengthened period had been allowed for reproduction. 



