CHAPTER IV. 



CLIMATIC EFFECTS OF " SVEDJANDE," OR "SARTAGE," 

 IN FINLAND. 



BY Svedjande and its consequences, including undesigned 

 extensive fires in the forest occasioned by the spreading 

 of the fire beyond the area contemplated and designed for 

 cultivation, there is being carried out in Finland a process 

 which, in the same, or in some other way, has extensively 

 cleared Europe of forests, which at one time extended 

 almost continuously from these lands to the extreme south, 

 and from the Atlantic to the Transylvanian regions in the 

 extreme east. From what has been stated, it appears 

 that there are in Finland districts in which this /Svedjande is 

 now prohibited ; others in which it is carried on under 

 restrictions; and others in which it is tolerated and 

 apparently freely practised. In this we have an epitome 

 of what, on a larger scale, is seen in Europe at the 

 present time : the sites of what were immense forests are 

 now densely inhabited by an agricultural and industrial 

 population, with only here and there vestiges of the 

 ancient forest, of which the existing forests in Norway, 

 Sweden, Finland, and Northern Russia are the remains 

 of the northern selvage ; in some regions, as in some of 

 these northern parts, the work of destruction is still going 

 on ; in others this is impossible, because all the forests 

 have been already destroyed ; in others it is restricted by 

 the imposition cf legislative enactments, to secure the 

 exploitation of the forests being carried on in accordance 

 with the most advanced Forest Science of the day, securing 

 a sustained production, and natural reproduction, of the 

 forests, along with the amelioration of the condition in 

 which they are or have been ; and in some districts of 



