214 THE FOREST LANDS OF FINLAND. 



into action without compulsion, the Committee have, in the 

 chapter of their proposals under consideration, brought in a 

 paragraph which determines the conditions according to 

 which such agreements may remain binding for a third 

 party. This specifies the owner's right, or that of mort- 

 gagees for any one of the proprietors whose forests have 

 been placed under common management, and determines 

 that this proprietory or mortgage right can only be 

 acquired after fast adherence to the agreement already 

 made about the management of the forests in common, 

 and does not permit withdrawal before the time of the 

 agreement has come to an end. 



'In the chapter relative to the woods of private pro- 

 prietors, which naturally constituted one of the principal 

 parts of the Committee's proposals, the Committee has 

 shown a disposition to intrude as little as possible into 

 the right of free disposition belonging to the individual 

 over his own property. 



' In the outset, the Committee remark that the descrip- 

 tion of the forests of the country left by the Committee of 

 1874 is sufficiently gloomy. And yet from the places 

 which the said Committee designated as already poor in 

 wood, there has been cut and brought out since 1874 

 no insignificant amount of timber, and it seems, say 

 the last Committee, that as the cutting down of timber 

 for sawing purposes in these places still continues, it is 

 apparent that no actual lack of timber has up to the 

 present been experienced. The final judgment expressed 

 by the Committee of 1874, when it declared that the 

 cutting down of timber over almost the whole lans was 

 carried on in a fashion which, in the event of its being 

 continued, would lead at an early day to a lack of timber 

 for house use over widely-extended districts, is considered 

 by the last Committee as certainly exhibiting some 

 degree of exaggeration. Traces of a wiser economy with 

 regard to forests, say the Committee, have more recently 

 more or less shown themselves, the causes of which arc 



