PRIMITIVE TREATMENT OF FORESTS. 59 



Stockholm in 1823, in 3 vols. Svo; and from what is 

 said by Lars Levi Laestadius, in his work entitled ' Om 

 Mojligheten och Fordelen af Allmanna Uppodlingar i 

 Lapprnarken/ published in Stockholm in 1824, it appears 

 that the practice of burning over woodland at once to 

 clear and to manure the ground, and from other incidental 

 references to it, is still a recognised usage in Swedish 

 husbandry. Though used in Norrland in Sweden as a 

 preparation for crops of forage or grain, it is employed in 

 Lapland more frequently to secure an abundant growth of 

 pasturage, which follows in two or three years after the 

 fire ; and it is sometimes resorted to as a means of driving 

 the Laplanders and their reindeer from the vicinity of the 

 grass grounds and the haystacks of the Swedish back- 

 woodsman, to which they are dangerous neighbours. The 

 forest rapidly recovers itself, but it is generally a genera- 

 tion or more before the reindeer moss grows again. When 

 a forest consists of pine (tall) the ground, instead of being 

 rendered fertile by the process, becomes hopelessly barren, 

 and for a long time afterwards produces nothing but weeds 

 and briars. 



It is practised to some extent in the regions contiguous 

 to Finland, and to a district inhabited by the Karelians, a 

 Finnish tribe divided by the frontier boundary between 

 Russia and the Grand Duchy. M. Judrae, an able member 

 of the Forest Service of Russia, in a narrative of a tour of 

 inspection of the forests of Olonetz and Archangel made by 

 him, thus writes of the practice : 



' In reading the reports of the Government Office of the 

 Imperial Domaines, one is arrested involuntarily at a place 

 which treats of unathorised fellings carried on without 

 leave or sanction. 



' According to these reports the population of the 

 government consists almost exclusively of those who were 

 Crown serfs and their children, whose requirements of 

 wood for fuel and building are sufficiently met by the 

 allotments made to them annually from the forests ; but 



