150 FORESTRY IN EASTERN RUSSIA. 



firewood, is a point to which the scientific forester finds it 

 necessary in many cases to give special attention ; and 

 this is not the same for all kinds of trees, nor for all forests 

 of the same kind of trees, varying as these do in soil and 

 latitude and exposure. 



In the case of two woods or forests in the Govern- 

 ment of Ufa we have it stated : — 



'5. After a lapse of forty years the cleared forest is 

 again fit for felling. In the cleared sections the forest 

 grows thicker than it was before 



' 10. The young growth grows more than double as 

 compared with the old wood that is cut.' 



Much more explicit information than this would be re- 

 quired to enable a scientific forester to give a scientific 

 deliverance on several questions, all of them of essential 

 importance to a satisfactory determination of the best 

 treatment to which such forests should be subjected in 

 accordance with the most advanced forest science of the 

 day; but apparently in the opinion of those who are 

 engaged in the management of these forests, when they 

 are felled in a cycle of forty years more wood is produced 

 by young woods on ground which had been cleared, than 

 was produced there by the virgin forest. 



The fact may be apparently inconsistent with the 

 gradual diminution of woods and forests in France and 

 in other countries on the Continent of Europe during a 

 century and a-half, and more, that this mode of exploita- 

 tion was followed there ; and with the diminution of 

 woods, and continuous rise in the price of wood required 

 as fuel in the metallurgical works in the Ural and other 

 districts in which this mode of exploitation has been 

 followed. Apparently inconsistent it may be ; but it is not 

 necessarily incompatible with these other facts. 



It remains to be seen whether the increased productive- 

 ness will be sustained in a second and a third crop ; I antici- 

 pate that it will not. But be this as it may — a cycle of the 

 same duration — forty years — will not necessarily be 

 equally adapted to other kinds of trees, or to the same 



