FOREST POLICIES OF FOREIGN NATIONS. 299 



climate of Norrland, especially, has been much 

 improved the last sixty years by the partial cutting 

 down of the forests." 1 



In the first part of the nineteenth century laws 

 were passed to restrict clearing, determine the 

 minimum size of logs to be cut, and, in some 

 parts (Lapland), where climatic deterioration was 

 specially feared, preventing all cutting without per- 

 mission from the government. The more system- 

 atic administration of government forests, some 

 18,000,000 acres, dates from the year 1860, and 

 with it a more conservative policy in the exploita- 

 tion generally. The success of this administration 

 seems not to have been conspicuous, due partly, 

 perhaps, to an ultra conservative management, 

 partly to the license system under which much 

 of the State forests are cut over by lumbermen. 

 Continuous agitation and troubling prophesies con- 

 cerning the future of the timber trade led, in 1 894, 

 to a special investigation of the subject by a com- 

 mission sent out from the University. As a result 

 of this inquiry it appears that Sweden is fully able 

 to continue her present cut, or even increase it, 

 without exhausting her resource, provided it is 

 sufficiently protected to permit its renewal and the 

 cutting is done conservatively. 



The simplicity of the composition of the forest, 

 namely, pine and spruce with oak almost exclu- 



1 "The Wood Industries of Sweden," Timber Trades Journal, 

 1896. 



