& THE FOREST LANDS OF FINLAND. 



forests, and requiring labour to prepare it for culture, and 

 care, and thought. Cultivation such as may be seen in 

 civilised communities was not attainable by these people, 

 were it only from their want of agricultural implements 

 and manure. In the same book, on the page following, it 

 is stated, " In these virgin soils, previously covered with 

 forest or bush, the produce of rye in the first year was ten 

 fold frequently twelve fold; and there were places 

 generally places where there had been old dense high 

 forests in which the produce was fifty fold, and in the 

 second year the produce was from ten to fifteen fold." ' 



SECTION B. FORMS ASSUMED BY THE PRACTICE 

 IN OTHER LANDS. 



The practice is widely diffused. ' It is a practice,' says 

 M. Parade, formerly Director of the School of Forestry at 

 Nancy, ' extremement ancienne.' And such it appears to 

 have been in France ; but there may be claimed for it an 

 antiquity far greater than is indicated by the practice of it 

 in France, in Sweden, or in Finland; and amongst the 

 conservative tribes of India it has been practised to an 

 extent which makes the Sartage of France, the Kaski of 

 Finland, and the Svedanje of Sweden appear as mere childish 

 play. In the Canara district it is known as Koomaree. In 

 a document issued by the Board of Revenue in India, in 

 1859, it is stated that, in some parts of Bekel, which is 

 the most southerly of the taluks of Canara, Koomaree cutting 

 forms part of the business of the ordinary ryots, and as 

 many as 25,746, or one-sixth of the population, are sup- 

 posed to be engaged in it ; but to the north of that taluk 

 it is carried on by the jungle tribes of Malai Kadeos and 

 Mahrattas, to the number of 59,500. Here we have up- 

 wards of 85,000 men felling, burning, and destroying 

 forests, for the sake generally of one or at most of two 

 crops sometimes, but rarely, of three. After which the 

 spot is deserted until the jungle is sufficiently high to 

 tempt the Koomaree cutter to renew the process. 



