60 THE FOREST LANDS OF FINLAND. 



these people for a long time back have been possessed 

 with the idea that woods are of no pecuniary value, and 

 they destroy them recklessly. When the annual allot- 

 ment happens to be less than they think they require for 

 building material or it may be for fancy erections which 

 they do not require they frequently go off to the woods 

 and cut what they want without ever applying for per- 

 mission to do so. And then the question comes up is it 

 possible for the people to acquire at the present time any 

 adequate idea of the necessity which there is for the con- 

 servation of the forests and the exploitation of them in a 

 rational or scientific way ? Let any one realise the case. 

 Around all of these villages, even the smallest of them, 

 there are forests of which the eye can see no end, they 

 appear to be interminable ; and there are depths of them 

 to which the foot of man has never penetrated. The 

 extent of these forests is such that to the peasantry they 

 seem inexhaustable ; while, on the other hand, the severity 

 of the climate, the unproductiveness of the soil, and the 

 poverty of the people, are such as to seem to call upon 

 every one to find out for himself with a hatchet in his 

 hand, any means of improving his condition. 



1 The natural condition of the country could not have 

 called forth or exercised upon the people an effect more to 

 be deplored. 



' The peasantry here look upon wood as being in common 

 with earth and air, fire and water, one of the elements, and 

 as equally free to all persons ; and they consequently con- 

 sider that they are free to use it without stint orlimit, 

 as one of the free gifts of nature. This state of things, 

 originating, as I have intimated, from the physical con- 

 dition of the country, can only be changed or destroyed by 

 the great change-producer, time ; and the reports of the 

 consequent destruction of the forests embrace numerous 

 details of the extension in the country of the practice of 

 Sartage or Svedanje. This system of felling is here very 

 frequently met with; but if we enter into the circum- 

 stances of the case, considering, on the one hand, the 



