43 



&c., or, if very fertile, with oats and buckwheat, after which it is 

 abandoned, to be again covered with forests, or to lie waste. 



The evils produced by this course of procedure will afterwards 

 appear. In another connection I have stated : 



From what is said by W. von Schubert in his " Eesagenom Sverige Norrige, 

 Lappland, &c.," published in Stockholm in 1823, in 3 vols. 8vo. ; and from 

 what is said by Lars Levi Laestadius, in his work entitled " Om Mojligheten 

 och Fordelen af allmanna Uppodlingar i Lappmarken," published in Stock- 

 holm in 1824, it appears that the practice of burning over woodland at once to 

 clear and to manure the ground, and from other incidental references to it, 

 is still a recognised usage in Swedish husbandry. 



There it is known as Svcedanje, which Swedish designation is 

 also in use in Finland, which was formerly a Swedish province. 

 Though used in Norrland in Sweden as a preparation for crops 

 of forage or grain, it is employed in Lapland more frequently to 

 secure an abundant growth of pasturage, which follows in two or 

 three years after the fire ; and it is sometimes resorted to as a means 

 of driving the Laplanders and their reindeer from the vicinity of the 

 grass grounds and the haystacks of the Swedish backwoodsman, to 

 which they are dangerous neighbours. The forest rapidly recovers 

 itself, but it is generally a generation or more before the reindeer 

 moss grows again. When the forest consists of pine (tall) the ground, 

 instead of being rendered fertile by the process, becomes hopelessly 

 barren, and for a long time afterwards produces nothing but weeds 

 and briars. I have elsewhere had occasion to remark, 



" 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 roehden of Finland, and the svcsdanje 

 of Sweden appear as mere childish play. In the Canara district it is known 

 as kumari. In a document issued by the Board of Revenue in India, in 1859, 

 it is stated that, in some parts of Bekal, which is the most southerly of the 

 taluks of Canara, kumari cutting forms part of the business of the ordinary 

 ryots, and as many as 25,746, or one-sixth of the population, are supposed to 

 be engaged in it; bnt to the north of that taluk it is carried on by the jungle 

 tribes of Malai Kadeos and Mahratas to the number of 59,500. Here we have 

 upwards 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 kumari cutter to renew the process. 



By this practice vast quantities of most valuable timber have been 

 destroyed. 



A good crop of hill rice, or Nullet, is obtained in the first year after the 

 consumption of the wood, a small crop is taken off the ground in the 

 second year, and sometimes in the third, after which, as has been stated, the 



