(pinus Sibirica). There are, however, in this forest large areas of swamp where only stunted growth is found, while isolation makes all systematic working impracticable except along the banks of the principal rivers.
Extensive export to Europe, therefore, is impossible from the greater part of these forests, on account of the distances and the impossibility of profitably carrying heavy but cheap material on long rail journeys from Siberia to the Finnish Gulf. The proposed extensions of the railway in the north of the Tobolsk Government would, of course, do much to obviate this difficulty by connecting the forests of these districts by a short rail journey to the White Sea in North European Russia. Even now forests are beginning to be exploited, and timber mills have actually been erected on the Tura, Tavda and Sosva rivers in the Obi watershed with a view to timber export via Archangel.
There is, however, one particular kind of timber, called Siberian pine (pinus Sibirica), which is found in the north of Siberia and possesses valuable qualities on account of its soft nature and adaptability to certain kinds of pattern work. There is a strong probability that a demand for its consumption will grow up in Western Europe to replace the dwindling stocks of Canadian yellow pine. Already it has acquired a value sufficiently high to counterbalance a journey of 2000 miles along the Siberian railway to the Baltic ports, and a development in the export of this timber is not improbable even with the present imperfect railway system in Western Siberia.
With the exception of Siberian pines, however,
