102 THE FOREST LANDS OF FINLAND. 



France, Spain, Italy, Austria, and Hungary, there are 

 being carried on extensive sylvicultural operations 

 designed to counteract evils which have been found 

 to follow the destruction of forests which has already 

 occurred. 



Of the epitome of this, which we have in the present 

 position of the practice of Svedjande in Finland, I avail 

 myself to bring under consideration the general subject 

 of the extent to which the destruction of extensive dense 

 forests may be expedient in the interests of the inhabit- 

 ants of the lands in which they exist. 



It has been made subject of complaint, and it may be 

 the case, that wherever man has gone to settle and replenish 

 the earth he has found it a wilderness, a dense jungle of 

 forests, and he has made it a desert, going forth then to 

 seek fresh fields and pastures new, again to repeat the 

 work of destruction. I repeat it may be so ; but, on the 

 other hand, it is the case that we have no indication that 

 it is the will of the Creator of these forests that the earth 

 should be anywhere continuously and always covered with 

 forests. It is a popular doctrine that on an exposed rock 

 there alights perchance the spore of some lichen, which, 

 finding there conditions favourable to its germination, 

 forthwith grows, and reproduces spores, and dies ; that in 

 process of time there alights on its decayed remains the 

 spore of a moss or fern, or other cryptogam, which finds 

 now what it would not have found before, and which others 

 of its kind alighting there aforetime found not, a soil 

 appropriate to its growth ; and forthwith it germinates 

 and grows. And again, long after this, there alights on 

 the decayed remains of these cryptogams the seed of 

 some flowering grass, or herb, or tree the follower, it may 

 be, of many which had fallen there and had been blown 

 away, or had been washed away, or had perished ; but 

 this finding now what these could not find erstwhile, 

 conditions favourable to its vegetation, it germinates, and 

 .begins a new departure in the clothing of the rock with 



