108 THE FOREST LANDS OF FINLAND. 



requirements, and that they are destined to pass away, 

 and to become, as other forests in other places have become, 

 things of the past, as really so as the forests and jungles of 

 old-world lycopods and calamites, and cycads and conifers, 

 the remains of which constitute the coal measures of the 

 present. And also, that the destruction of these existing 

 forests, which I deplore, and fain would arrest in many 

 districts, is not everywhere and always an unmixed evil. 



Consider what Central Europe must have been, and 

 what must have been the condition of its savage inhabit- 

 ants, when it was covered by one far extending forest ; 

 look to it now, and consider the condition of its inhabit- 

 ants, and say has the destruction of the vast Hircinian 

 forest been an unmixed evil ? As is the case with Europe 

 on a vast scale, such on a small scale is it with Finland. 

 Here there is not a little land, now pasture land and 

 cultivated fields, which, to make use of a common ex- 

 pression, has been recovered from the forest. Towns and 

 cities and public buildings now stand where once grew 

 trees of the forest ; and within the forest bounds there 

 are, besides these, extensive clearings produced acci- 

 dentally by storms sweeping over the land, carrying all 

 before them or compelling them to bow and break, and 

 let them pass. These in many instances have been made 

 subservient to the support of man and beast ; and I pre- 

 sume that no one will say that in these cases the destruction 

 of the forest was unmixed evil. 



With regard to the immediate effects of Svedjande, it 

 supplies, in the best possible condition, a soil such as 

 the ground can yield. Of ground over which a forest 

 fire has passed, Marsh writes : 



' Apart from the destruction of the trees and the laying 

 bare of the soil, and consequently the free admission of 

 sun, rain, and air, to the ground, the fire of itself exerts 

 an important influence on its texture and condition. It 

 cracks and even sometimes pulverises the rocks and stones 

 on or near the surface ; it consumes a portion of the half- 



