FORESTS. 41 



reckon the interest, or yearly revenue, as one per cent.; and, 

 on the other hand, we find that the yearly consumption or 

 expenditure is one-twenty-eighth, or one and a quarter per 

 cent., according to which reckoning the whole of the forest 

 capital will have disappeared in 350 years from the present 

 time. If this, however, were the case, we could hardly say 

 that the prospect for the future was so dark, because for the 

 next three centuries we might manage our forests after a 

 better plan. 



" But this result, i. e., the disappearance of the forests, 

 must come much quicker, when we take into consideration 

 that the population of Sweden increases after the rate of one 

 per cent, per annum, and therefore that the annual consump- 

 tion of wood will also increase in a like ratio (one per cent.); 

 so that the forest capital will yearly decrease much more 

 than one and a quarter per cent. 



" In seventy years the population of Sweden will be 

 seven millions, consequently the yearly consumption must 

 be assumed as if the seventy years were double, or above 

 fourteen millions of fathoms; whence it follows that the 

 Swedish forests will have totally disappeared not in 350, but 

 in 120 or 130 years." 



We have above alluded to the hundred years' circulation 

 in these forests, and I will now explain how they should be 

 properly managed, that the owner might be able to obtain a 

 yearly supply of wood and yet leave a sufficient stock in his 

 forests for a future day. A fir tree grows one foot a year, and 

 has arrived at a good timber growth say in a hundred years. 

 This varies, as we have before shown, in different latitudes ; 

 but this circulation is near enough for our present purpose. 



Supposing a man to purchase say 1000 acres of forest, 

 and in its present state there will probably not be a tree of 

 forty years' growth standing on it, but still on every 

 acre some timber trees, although small, besides small wood. 

 He divides this forest into a hundred parts, and clears off 

 ten acres, or one-hundredth part, every year, cutting down 

 every tree, great and small ; for the principal thing to be 

 regarded in forest culture is, that the trees all grow pretty 



