90 TIMBER REQUIREMENTS 



tenance of her forest area. Since this realization 

 the State has made considerable efforts to put an 

 end to the wholesale lumbering. When the fifty- 

 year leases began to fall in, she refused to renew 

 them, even in cases where their owners, the big 

 lumberers, recognizing that the era of replanting 

 had dawned and would be profitable, offered to 

 replant them. Many of these men had acquired 

 large areas of forest land by private purchase in 

 former days, and the State became alarmed at so 

 large an area of the country being in the hands of 

 these trading firms. A law was passed preventing 

 them from acquiring any more land in the country. 

 It is impossible to go into the Swedish position in 

 detail. But the outcome, as it affects ourselves, 

 is that there appears little probability of the Swedish 

 exports to this country remaining at their 1913 

 figure for any length of time. The extensive areas 

 felled-over under the fifty-year lease system, from 

 which the imports received in this country were 

 mainly derived, and which consisted of the most 

 accessible and the finest forest, were left implanted 

 by the lumberers and their replanting has only just 

 commenced. The State forests are of considerable 

 size. But they are far more inaccessible, and consist 

 of poorer quality material. 



Norway, It has been an accepted idea amongst 

 experts for some years that Norway has been over- 

 cutting in her forests i.e. cutting out more annually 

 than was being put on in increment by the un felled 

 areas for some time past. Both Norway and 

 Sweden have taken full advantage of the high war 





