346 CAUSES OF THE DESTRUCTION OF THE FOREST. 
economy would be continued for generations, and, wasteful as it 
is, is still largely pursued in Northern Sweden, Swedish Lap- 
land, and sometimes even in France and the United States.* 
Principal Causes of the Destruction of the Forest. 
The needs of agriculture are the most familiar cause of the 
destruction of the forest in new countries; for not only does 
an increasing population demand additional acres to grow the 
vegetables which feed it and its domestic animals, but the sloy- 
enly husbandry of the border settler soon exhausts the luxuri- 
ance of his first fields, and compels him to remove his household 
gods to a fresher soil. The extent of cleared ground required 
for agricultural use depends very much on the number and 
kinds of the cattle bred. We have seen, in a former chapter, 
that, in the United States, the domestic quadrupeds amount to 
more than a hundred millions, or nearly three times the num- 
ber of the human population of the Union. In many of the 
a long succession of years to make the resemblance perfect. That the an- 
nual fires alone occasioned the peculiar character of the oak-openings, is 
proved by the fact that as soon as the Indians had left the country, young 
trees of many species sprang up and grew luxuriantly upon them. See a 
very interesting account of the oak-openings in DwieuHt’s TZ7avels, iv., pp- 
58-63. 
* The practice of burning over woodland, at once to clear and manure the 
ground, is called in Swedish svedjande, a participial noun from the verb 
att svedja, to burn over. Though used in Sweden as a preparation for crops 
of rye or other grain, itis employed in Lapland more frequently to secure an 
abundant growth of pasturage, which follows in two or three years after the 
fire; and it is sometimes resorted to as a mode of driving the Laplanders and 
their reindeer from the vicinity of the Swedish backwoodsman’s grass-grounds 
and hay-stacks, to which they are dangerous neighbors. The forest, indeed, 
rapidly recovers itself, but it is a generation or more before the reindeer-moss 
grows again. When the forest consists of pine, tal/, the ground, instead of 
being rendered fertile by this process, becomes hopelessly barren, and for a 
long time afterwards produces nothing but weeds and briers.—La:sTADIUS, Om 
Uppodlingar i Lappmarken, p. 15. See also ScHuBeRT, Resa t Sverge, ii., p. 
375. 
In some parts of France this practice is so general that Clavé says: ‘‘In 
the department of Ardennes it (/e sartage) is the basis of agriculture.” 
