136 THE FOREST LANDS OF NORTHERN RUSSIA. 
accordance with a practice followed there and elsewhere in 
the distribution of allotments of communal arable ground. 
In this the ground is divided into long narrow strips or 
lines from three to six fathoms broad, and from one hundred 
to five hundred long, which strips are again sub-divided into 
lots of equal size for allotment to the members of the com- 
munity. Something similar may be seen in the vicinity 
of Berwick-upon-Tweed, where lands granted to the free- 
men by James I. of England are allotted periodically to 
individual members of the community. 
In other cases in Russia, it may be for convenience in the 
tillage of lands allowed to lie many years fallow, these are 
cultivated in long strips, which, varying in colour with the 
crop grown, or the years which have elapsed since they 
were tilled, present to the eye of the passing traveller 
what may suggest the idea of a corduroy of variously- 
coloured ridges. In felling or clearing forests something 
similar is done—long straight strips being cleared, with 
strips of forest between them, sheltering from destructive 
storms the crops which are raised. 
Sometimes the permission to fell the trees on ground to 
be cleared is disposed of by auction, sometimes it is other- 
wise. In sales by auction it is assumed—it may be the result 
of what is known in forest science as taxation, survey and 
measurement—that the whole area, or so many decatines, 
is forest, and that each decatin contained so many trees, 
or so many cubic fathoms of wood ; and, according to what 
may be the terms of sale, the offer of the buyer may, or 
may not be subject to deduction, either for deficiency in 
extent, or deficiency in number or cubic contents of trees ; 
but the buyer has the benefit of any excess over what had 
been assumed. But the whole of these conditions and 
details pertain more to private than to State forests, and 
the mention of them is leading us away from the regions 
which are here more particularly under consideration. 
Of several forest officials I enquired whether the annual 
production of wood in the district equalled, exceeded, or 
was less than the consumption by felling and fire and 
