The general impression produced on my mind by all I have learned is that the exploitation is on what is known in France as La Methode a Tire et Aire — a rough division of the forests into sections to be successfully exploited in successive periods — with the occasional practice of Jardinage or felling of trees selected as suitable for some purpose designed, when this is deemed expedient. But all this is done with a general tendency to introduce, or at least prepare for exploitation, according to what is known in Poland as the scientific method of exploitation; that known in Germany as Die FachwerTte Method • and in France as La Methode des Compartiments, in regard to which details have been given in a preceding chapter, relative to forest exploitation in Poland. And the policy seems to me to be to entrust the work to educated foresters with general instructions, but with great freedom of action, so as to secure the application to the details of the principles involved, leaving them free in the determination of the application of these, as the medical practitioner is left in determining the application of the principles of his profession, to be made in the case of any and every patient under his care. Of the views entertained in Russia in regard to the different methods of exploitation, which have engaged the attention of students of forest science, I have given in Forests and Forestry of Northern Russia and Lands Beyond (pp. 101-108), a translation of a statement of these by M. Werekha, in a Notice sur les Forets et leur Products, fyc.> prepared by a special commission charged with the collection of products of the forests, and of rural industry, for the International Exhibition at Vienna in 1863.
The following is an account of the transport and preparation of timber on the rivers Dnieper and Berezina, published in the Transactions of the Scottish Arboricultural Society as an abridgement of an article on the subject in the Timber Trades Journal: —
' The business is done here on no small scale; the amount of wood yearly floated down on these two rivers is immense. From the moment, in the early spring, when the ice melts and the rivers rise some ten to sixteen feet above their usual level, we see the rafts coming down in succeeding masses
' Like all business in this part of Russia, the wood trade is in the hands of the Jews. Owners of estates and forests sell part of their wood to them, and they know how to make the best of everything that comes into their hands. Winter begins here generally in November. In September, when the peasants have to pay their taxes, contracts are made with them, when generally those who are living together in small villages agree, and bind themselves, against an advance, to cut and drive a certain quantity of wood down to the banks of the rivers. These advances are sometimes a third or one-half of the amount they can expect to earn during the course of the winter, but when the agreement is signed by the elected members of the court of the village, or the Starosta and the Uradnisk, as they are called here, there is hardly any risk of loss.