CURTAILMENT OF TIMBER SUPPLIES FROM SWEDEN. 337 
XXXIV. Anticipated Curtailment of Timber Supplies from 
Sweden. By Lieut.-Colonel BaILey. 
The correspondent of the Z?mes, writing from Stockholm, 
makes the important announcement that on 27th April, after 
prolonged debates in both Houses, the Swedish Government 
passed a Bill limiting the rights of large timber companies to 
purchase extensive tracts of land in the forest districts of 
Northern Sweden. Under the old conditions, the timber on 
such lands was felled on a very large scale, more with a view 
to immediate profits than to the proper working of the forest 
lands, and the extension of agriculture in those districts was thus 
materially hindered. In defending the Bill, the Prime Minister 
said that the restrictions it established in the private rights of 
landowners as to the free disposal of their property constituted 
a legal consecration of the principle that such rights could not 
be considered as absolute and unlimited, but must give way to 
the necessity of safeguarding the future and the interests of the 
country at large. 
This legislation will certainly tend to check the reckless 
destruction of growing forest in Northern Sweden, where private 
owners have, for a long time past, been disposing of their pro- 
ducing stock with a view to the “immediate profits” they have 
thus been able to realise. It must also, of course, tend to 
reduce the cuttings made in that country more nearly to the 
amount annually produced by the soil, and thus to bring nearer 
the time when our imports from Sweden, which at present 
consist largely of withdrawn wood-capital, will no longer be 
possible on the present scale. Whether this action by the 
Government comes in time to save a very large bulk of forest- 
capital remains to be seen; but be the diminished imports from 
Sweden due to simple exhaustion of capital, or to its better 
conservation, the immediate effect on us will be that either we 
must look elsewhere for a part of the supplies hitherto obtained 
from Sweden, or we must go without them. That this is a 
very serious consideration is proved by the fact that nearly one- 
quarter of our total annual imports now come from Sweden, 
which is also our largest source of supply. The amount annually 
received from that country is not far short of two and a half 
millions of tons. 
