NOTES ON FORESTRY IN FINLAND. 245 



lature has attempted to check this wasteful pi-actice, but the 

 restrictions imposed by law are not always regarded. 



Equally antiquated and wasteful is the method of manufacture 

 of tar — an industry dating from the sixteenth century. The 

 healthy and vigorous trees of forty to eighty years of age are 

 partially stripped of their bark for several successive seasons, and 

 are then felled, cut up into pieces, and charred in pits or kilns, 

 from which the tar is collected. Large tracts of forest have thus 

 been destroyed. Although tar-burners are now content to use 

 less extravagant material, such as stumps, roots, saw-mill waste, 

 and forest thinnings, the old wasteful methods are still in vogue 

 to a large extent. 



Formerly forest fires were frequent, and large tracts of dense 

 pine and fir forests have thus been destroyed. Terribly destruc- 

 tive gales also swept over much valuable timber during the years 

 1866, 1873, 1890, 1897. Excessive grazing with cattle, horses, 

 and, in some cases, even with sheep, has been, and still is, very 

 detrimental. 



Export of Timber, Etc. 



The chief products of the forests now go through the saw-mills. 

 In 1889 planks, battens, boards, staves, etc., were exported to a 

 total value of 82,000,000 marks. In 1899 the exportation of 

 hewn spars or beams, of laths and lathwood, of round spars, bow- 

 sprits, yards, masts, etc., represented a value of about 5^ million 

 marks. Pit-props and wood for pulp-mills and paper factories 

 were exported to the value of 5^ million marks. To this list 

 should be added fii-e wood (SJ million marks), and bobbin squares 

 .of birch (3i millions), bobbins and articles of turnery (3 millions), 

 poles, rafters, knees for keels, beams (2 millions). The value 

 of the whole bulk of wood exported, hewn or manufactured in 

 the saw-mills, amounted in 1899 to the large sum of 101 million 

 marks. To this may be added the export of pulp, pasteboard, 

 and paper, over 18 million marks, or nearly £6,000,000 sterling 

 in all. 



State Forest Administration. 



Not till 1850 was it decided to establish a proper forest 

 administration, and it was ten or twelve years later before any 

 thing practical was done. Following on advice given by Baron 

 Edmund Von Berg, of the Forest School of Tharand, in Saxony, 



