DIFFERENT METHODS OF EXPLOITATION. 107 



sation of the use of pasturage in the forests. Composite 

 exploitation, or that of coppice mixed with timber trees, 

 has extended without preconcerted plan, and solely by 

 isolated cases, into the western provinces of the region of 

 black soil. 



'Besides these principal forms of forest management, 

 there is met with in the Russian forests the application of 

 some other varieties of exploitation relating rather to the 

 soil than to the forests. Sartage, not only of coppice, but 

 frequently of tolerably high perches of resinous trees, 

 for the most part without any system, exists in the 

 Governments situated in the north and in the north-east, 

 but it tends from day to day to disappear. Sartage* con- 

 sists in this, that on fields exhausted by the culture of flax 

 or of cereals, the poor soil, by its nature where impover- 

 ished by exhaustive culture, remains fallow during a very 

 long time ; but in the long run it covers itself with an 

 arborescent vegetation which, penetrating with its roots 

 into the unexhausted subsoil, makes rapid increase. When 

 nature has accomplished this process, the peasants, after 

 having cut the wood, burn it on the spot as they have no 

 sale for it, sow flax or corn for some years on the soil 

 enriched by the ashes, and when indications of exhaustion 

 appear on the ground so treated, they leave it anew in 

 fallow. This ancient mode of culture is still in use in the 

 southern and western countries of Europe. Traces of a 

 more regular organisation of alternative management con- 

 sists in utilising the soil, now as fields of labour, now as 

 soil covered with forest trees, and may be seen in some 

 spots in the central portion of Russia, for example in the 

 district of Melenkoff, in the Government of Vladinir, in the 

 district of Mojaisk, in the Government of Moscow, where, 

 after the removal of the fellings, the soil of these is put under 

 culture with rye, oats, buckwheat, and other plants used 

 in domestic economy during two or three years, and after 



* Sartage has been brought under consideration in a previous chapter [ante p. 85], 

 and the advantages and disadvantages of this mode of exploitation have been described 

 in a companion volume entitled Finland : Its Forest* and Forest Management. 



