FOREST INDUSTRIES. 139 
resuming this industry. Tar is manufactured extensively 
in the Government of Archangel. The operation is of the 
simplest character. 
Spirits of turpentine are also manufactured there, and 
this may also be reckoned among the small industries 
of the peasants living in forest districts. The following 
account of how this was done sixty years ago may be con- 
sidered antiquated, but amongst a population such as they 
are changes in rural industries are not frequent, or speedily 
and extensively effected. It is extracted from a paper 
published in the Transactions of the Highland Society of 
Scotland for 1820, entitled ‘An Account of the Manufac- 
ture of Turpentine from the Pinus Sylvestris, as practised 
by the Native Peasantry of the Interior of the Russian 
Empire.” By William Howison, M.D. 
‘The second day after my arrival, writes Dr Howison, 
“I made an excursion in the neighbourhood of the mansion- 
house, during the course of which I arrived at a wretched 
building, situated upon the margin of the forest, at the 
door of which two Russian boors were busily employed 
with their hatchets in cutting inio small chips the stumps 
and dried roots of fir trees, which had been previously dug 
from the earth, and were lying collected together upon the 
surface of the snow. Upon going into the interior of the 
wooden shed or building, there was a fine clear fire burning, 
and two old boors distilling turpentine from the chips of fir 
wood broken down, as already noticed, by their companions, 
In the centre of the apartment there was a brick furnace, 
with a clear fire burning in it, and a large iron boiler built 
in above it. The boiler was completely filled with the cut 
chips of wood, and a quantity of water; the flame of the 
fire reverberating upon its under surface. From the top 
of the boiler, which was accurately and neatly covered up 
with a close lid, a spiral iron tube passed out, and entered 
a large wooden vessel placed within a short distance from 
it, which originally had been completely filled with snow 
and ice, but which, by this time, were almost entirely con- 
