196 FORESTRY OF NORWAY. 
being determined by the convenience of the contractor ; 
and only trees suitable for his purpose being felled. 
These are generally trees, on an average, a little under 
two feet in diameter; and all such are felled, leaving after 
them but a poor and scraggy crop of growing trees to 
replace, in course of time, if they can, what has been 
removed, 
In Norway there is no lack of means for transporting 
the felled timber by water to the coast. In many places 
the felled trees, stripped only of their larger boughs, are 
tumbled into a mountain stream, to be by it borne to the 
nearest river or lake; in others, they are shot along arti- 
ficially constructed slides, leading to some lake or river. 
These slides are in structure intermediate between the 
chemins & trainaux and the langoirs or glissoires artificiels, 
used in France. They are about 5 feet wide. Sleepers 
are laid across the line at about equal distances apart, and 
upon these are laid, lengthwise, trunks of young trees 
about 5 or 6 inches apart, and often so arranged that those 
at the sides are somewhat higher than those in the middle 
so as to form a groove of sufficient depth to keep the shot 
timber in the slide. In some cases these slides run 
directly down the declivity to the river or lake to which 
they are destined to convey the timber. In other cases, 
they run across the side of the hill in a slanting direction. 
In some places earth is removed to allow of the desired 
angle of inclination being secured. More frequently this 
is attained by the slide being supported at places by piles 
of earth or beams. When necessary, they are carried on 
supports across small valleys, or watercourses, separating 
the forest on the one side of a mountain from the forest 
on the side of another; and occasionally there may be 
seen their straight course altered only by an angle more or 
less abrupt. Atsuch places there is generally raised at the 
outer angle of the slide a bank against which the trees 
may strike in their descent and then recoil into the new 
direction; these by the new direction thus given to their 
