NOTES ON THE EXTRACTION OF TIMBER 129 
of this undertaking, and the amount of timber that is 
brought down, it may be stated that the actual cost of 
erecting this shute was over £1,000 per mile, and the 
company who work the concern handle an output of 
something like 575 million cubic feet of wood annually. 
It may be here. noted that the original idea of the 
water-shutes that were at one time popular in America 
as a pastime and, subsequently, in other countries, was 
taken from this method of transporting timber. 
After the few remarks as to how the Canadian forests 
are exploited, and the methods in force for transporting 
the timbers to the mills, there is little to add in regard 
to the system by which the vast quantities of coniferous 
timbers that are obtained from the forests of Russia 
and other Northern European countries are prepared 
and shipped to markets. The methods are practically 
identical ; both railways and roadways are inadequate, 
especially in Russia, and, as in Canada, the waterways 
are largely used. On the currents of the rivers the logs 
are transported to the mills, which are placed at ready 
points in the Baltic, Gulf of Bothnia and the White Sea. 
These mills are equipped with up-to-date machinery 
suitable for converting the timber into dimensions 
required by different markets. Most of the ports in 
these regions are, however, ice-bound during certain 
months of the year and, consequently, exports are only 
made during the open-water season. 
Various other interesting means of producing timber 
from its native source, in relatively small quantities 
for native consumption, obtain in various parts of 
Europe. In some districts of Austria and Germany, 
where the configuration of the land admits, slides with 
more or less steep gradients are common. These slides, 
or sledges, are either drawn by horse-power or worked 
by men, and are constructed of two horizontal pieces 
