298 
FORESTS OF RUSSIA. 
ring the period in question, France neither exported manufac¬ 
tured wood or rough timber, nor derived important collateral 
advantages of any sort from the destruction of her forests. 
She is consequently impoverished and crippled to the extent 
of the difference between what she actually possesses of 
wooded surface and what she ought to have retained. 
Italy and Spain are bared of trees in a greater degree than 
France, and even Russia, which we habitually consider as sub¬ 
stantially a forest country, is beginning to suffer seriously for 
want of wood. Jourdier, as quoted by Clave, observes : “ In¬ 
stead of a vast territory with immense forests, which we expect 
to meet, one sees only scattered groves thinned by the wind or 
by the axe of the moujik , grounds cut over and more or less 
recently cleared for cultivation. There is probably not a single 
district in Russia which has not to deplore the ravages of man 
or of fire, those two great enemies of Muscovite sylviculture. 
This is so true, that clear-sighted men already foresee a crisis 
which will become terrible, unless the discovery of great de¬ 
posits of some new combustible, as pit coal or anthracite, shall 
diminish its evils.” * 
mountains expose her territory to much greater injury from torrents, and 
because at least her southern provinces are more frequently visited both 
by extreme drought and by deluging rains. 
* fitudes sur VEconomie Forestiere , p. 261. Clave adds (p. 262): “ The 
Eussian forests are very unequally distributed through the territory of this 
vast empire. In the north they form immense masses, and cover whole 
provinces, while in the south they are so completely wanting that 
the inhabitants have no other fuel than straw, dung, rushes, and heath.” 
* * * “At Moscow, firewood costs thirty per cent, more than at 
Paris, while, at the distance of a few leagues, it sells for a tenth of that 
price.” 
This state of things is partly due to the want of facilities of transporta¬ 
tion, and some parts of the United States are in a similar condition. 
During a severe winter, six or seven years ago, the sudden freezing of the 
canals and rivers, before a large American town had received its usual 
supply of fuel, occasioned an enormous rise in the price of wood and coal, 
and the poor suffered severely for want of it. Within a few hours of the 
city were large forests and an abundant stock of firewood felled and pre¬ 
pared for burning. This might easily have been carried to town by the 
