Reclamation Work. 235 



The reclamation of shifting sands and sand dunes 

 has also received considerable attention and, to some 

 extent, the reboisement of mountain slopes in the Crimea 

 and Caucasus. Of the former some 10 million acres are 

 in existence and for 50 years sporadical work in their 

 recovery was done, but only in 1891 and 1892, when two 

 droughty famine years had led to an investigation of 

 agricultural conditions was a systematic attempt pro- 

 posed, and this was begun in 1897. By 1902 some 80,000 

 acres had been fixed. In addition 1,500 square miles 

 of swamps in Western Eussia were reclaimed by ex- 

 tensive canals and recovered with meadow and forest 

 at a cost of $300,000, of which the Imperial Treasury 

 paid one-third, the owaers one-half, the local govern- 

 ment the balance. 



While rational forest management, as we have seen, 

 is far from being generally established, the government 

 tries at least to prevent waste and to pave the way from 

 exploitation to regulated management. 



FINLAND. 



Finland, the *^and of a thousand lakes" and of most 

 extensive forests (over 50 per cent.), is hardly less im- 

 portant as a wood producer than Eussia itself; its 

 wood exports amounting at present to around 170 mil- 

 lion cubic feet and over 20 million dollars in value, 

 represent over 50 per cent, of its trade and its most im- 

 portant resource. 



Settled in the 7th century by an Aryan tribe, the 

 Finns, congeners of the Magyars, who subdued the 

 aboriginal Laplanders, Finland became by conquest in 

 the 12th century, and remained for 500 years, a prov- 



