CHAPTER II. 



FOREST EXPLOITATION IN THE GOVERNMENT OF UFA. 



IN many parts of Russia we meet with forests consisting 

 almost exclusively of some one kind of tree ; and to the 

 student of forest science indications are afforded of the 

 existing state of forests in this particular in special terms 

 which are in use, descriptive and applicable exclusively to 

 different kinds of forests thus constituted. It was so 

 formerly in France, where in old treatises we read of a 

 ckesnaie, an aulnaie, a urnaie, a boulnaie, a possellniere 

 terms which fell into disuse there when the forests came to 

 be composed of a mixture of different kinds of trees referred 

 to in these designations. But the usage still prevails in 

 Russia where a forest of firs is called pichtovnikk ; a forest 

 of birches, bereznikk ; a thick forest upon a marsh, luiva ; 

 a forest in a hollow, debre ; a forest of pines and birches, 

 situated in a sandy country, borr ; one composed of lofty 

 trees, doubrava ; and many such terms are in use, showing 

 that forests have not yet lost in that country distinctive 

 characteristics. In the vicinity of the Ural mountains the 

 birches, larches, and cedars, have ceased to form distinct 

 forests, but are associated with other kinds of trees : with 

 firs on marshy grounds ; with pines on stony places. 



In the Izvestia of the Russian Geographical Society, 

 issued towards the end of 1881, there appeared a paper 

 by M. Olshevsky, from which it appeared that, comparing 

 surveys which were made in the province of Ufa before 

 1841 with the distribution of forests which had then been 

 recently reported, the area of forests which at the 

 previous time was about 17,577,000 acres had then been 

 reduced by at least 3,500,000 acres, although the popula- 



