CHAPTER XIX. 
FOREST EXPLOITATION, TRANSPORT OF TIMBER, AND 
EXPORT TIMBER TRADE, 
From a friend who has travelled mere extensively in 
Norway than I have done, I have learned—and the 
information is in accordance with what may be seen from 
numerous forest maps which have been issued by the 
Government—that most of the forests are found along 
river-courses. They extend from half a mile to three or 
four miles from the banks of the river, and up the preci- 
pitous hill-sides beyond. Sometimes the continuity is 
broken abruptly on the river-bed by perpendicular cliffs ; 
but the forest extends on the table-land above, like a 
dislocated geological stratum, or the further side of a dyke 
or fault, and this gives, as has been stated before, a char- 
acter to the exploitation of the forests, in connection with 
the bringing out of the timber. 
Many of the forests are private property ; others belong 
to commercial proprietors. In both classes of forests the 
right to fell timber is generally let to contractors possessed 
of large capital, by whom arrangements for felling wood 
upon an extensive scale are made. 
Previous to the introduction, of late years, of an 
improved forest economy, the system of exploitation or 
working usually adopted was one intermediate between 
that known in France as Jardinage, felling only such trees 
as were desired,and that known as A tire e¢ atre,in which the 
forest is divided into as many sections as periods required 
for the reproduction of the crops, and these are cleared in 
succession, but only one in each period: the coupés, or fell- 
ings in different periods in these Norwegian forests not 
being regulated in extent by precise measurement, but 
