THE FOREST EESOURCES OF THE WORLD. 19 



This table does not include the middle Asiatic provinces, as Trans- 

 baikal, Amur, and Sakhalin, which comprise 2,316,000,000 acres, and 

 are practically destitute of forests. The proportion of forest for 

 the provinces which have forests is 25.73 per cent, while the propor- 

 tion of forest to the total area of the Empire, without Finland, is only 

 15.45 per cent. The table also shows how different is the distribution 

 of forests in various parts of the Russian Empire. Thus, while Euro- 

 pean Russia has over 36 per cent, the Caucasus has only 17 per cent, 

 and eastern Siberia has but 5 per cent of its area under forest. The 

 forests of European Russia are of course of the greatest value. Even 

 there the distribution is very unequal; the five northern provinces 

 contain practically two-thirds of the total forest area. 



COMPOSITION. 



The composition of the Russian forests is still very little known. In 

 1893, out of the 315,900,000 acres of forest in European Russia and 

 Caucasus which were under the administration oi the forest depart- 

 ment, there was 88 per cent of conifers, 11 per cent of hard wood, and 

 1 per cent of openings and cuttings which did not come up to forest. 

 In Siberia 71 per cent of the total area was under conifers, 29 per cent 

 under hard woods. Oak occupied 3,284,682 acres, either in the form 

 of pure forests or mixed forests in which oak predominated. 



OWNERSHIP. 



The State owns 643,067,100 acres, or 79.2 per cent of the total area, 

 and only 169,573,500 acres, or 20.8 per cent, belong to other owners. 

 The distribution of the forests according to ownership, however, varies 

 somewhat in the different regions. Of the 444,711,600 acres in Euro- 

 pean Russia, more than two-thirds belong to the State and Crown, 

 and only 31 per cent to private owners; in the Caucasus the State 

 owns 13,405,500 acres out of a total area of 19,899,000 acres, or 67.3 

 per cent; in eastern Siberia the State owns about 76 per cent; in 

 western Siberia the State possesses nearly all of the forests; out of 

 307,530,000 acres, 303,671,700 acres, or 98.7 per cent, belong to the 

 State. Out of 643,067,100 acres of forest belonging to the State 

 there are, properly speaking, only 341,442,000 acres of true forest 

 land, the rest being either agricultural or swamp land. Therefore the 

 total forest area of Russia should be not 812,640,600, but 511,015,500 

 acres. 



Of the total forest area of European Russia, 1,269,000 acres are 

 declared protective forests and 1,225,800 acres are watershed forests. 

 In a similar way, in the Caucasus 81,000 acres are declared protective 

 and 180,900 acres are watershed forests. 



ANNUAL GROWTH AND ANNUAL CUT. 



A comparison of the annual growth and annual cut per acre in 

 the Russian forests shows that at present only a fraction of the 

 annual growth is actually used. The reason is that the bulk of the 

 forests is located in regions but poorly developed and with no means 

 of transportation. According to the statement of the Russian 

 administration, only a small part of the annual growth can now be 



