‘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 Lorests and Forest Management. 
