ANCIENT FORESTS Ol? BUEOfE. SI 



' Notwithstanding this vast extent of forests, the epoch 

 is not very distant in which these forests will have dis- 

 appeared, and made way for meagre plantations, for clumps 

 spread here and there upon the cultivated plain. The 

 Muscovite peasant yields to no other people in his reckless 

 fury iu removing the timber. Cultivated lands daily suc- 

 ceed the forests. The sectaries who seek in the depth of 

 the forest a refuge against religious jjersecution, labour 

 also on their side in the destruction of the woods, and set 

 on fire [?] the retreats which at present screen them from 

 the rigour of the laws. 



' At times it is not the flame kindled by the Russian 

 labourer, but the fire brought by the carelessness of the 

 Syrian or Siberian hunter which produces these fatal 

 causes of destruction. The thunder-bolt [?] has equally 

 determined those combustions which annihilated thousands 

 of trees and sables ; lastly, the rigour of cold produces also 

 effects analogous to those of fire. If the frost does not 

 reduce the trees to ashes it splits them often through the 

 whole extent of their stem, with a noise that resounds in 

 the steppes like the firing of a cannon at sea. During the 

 winter season the forests remain buried under the ice, 

 which by accumulating overreaches their tops. This 

 terrible cold tinges the larches with different tints, the 

 only trees which remind the traveller, lost in the toundras, 

 of the existence of vegetation. Their bark is black or 

 red according as they are exposed to the north or to the 

 south, and this circumstance furnishes a sort of na,tural 

 compass. 



' When the forests have been ravaged by fire or cut 

 down by the axe, the kinds which again spring up over the 

 burned or cleared land present in succession some pheno- 

 mena of alternations similar to what takes place in 

 America. It is the birch which comes first, in . small 

 thickets; then the pines make their appearance. In 

 Poland we meet with only very few forests capable of 

 giving an idea of the ancient forest state of the country; 

 A sample may be seen in the forest of Wodwosco, which 



