to develop plants. Some of them are putting out two million 

 and upwards of seedlings every year. Hardly any land is 

 permitted to go uncultivated for more than three years after 

 being cut over, the interval being allowed merely to permit 

 the soil to recuperate itself and to get in readiness for a new 

 growth. Seeding is carried on by means of horse-drawn 

 mechanical seeders of plow-like appearance. Pine and spruce 

 are usually sown in conjunction, an equal quantity of each 

 species of seed being dropped into the ground together. Boys 

 and girls and young women, as well as men, are employed in 

 the planting and seeding operations, the object being to reduce 

 the labour cost to the minimum. 



Re-planting is admittedly a costly operation, especially 

 when the interest on the capital investment is taken into 

 account. But here they do not consider the question of com- 

 pound interest on the capital which is the bugbear of reforest- 

 ation in ' Canada. Each year's operations are looked upon 

 from a bookkeeping point of view as a unit. Cost is calculated 

 on that basis. Swedish forest experts are not all convinced, 

 however, of the efficacy or the economic value of artificial 

 replanting, although evidences of its practical results are by 

 no means wanting. Southern Sweden possesses some fine 

 examples of cultivated forests which are from fifty to sixty 

 years old. They are now ready for their first thinning and will 

 yield a very satisfactory harvest. In some of them the trees 

 are planted at regular intervals of six feet in either direction. 

 They are mostly pine and spruce. They are fine upstanding 

 trees and present a uniform appearance of almost military 

 precision. There are a few cultivated forests older than those 

 described but systematic efforts at replanting seem to have 

 had their beginning much less than fifty years ago. 



In Northern Sweden apparently no efforts were made to 

 propagate forests in any large way up to fifteen years ago. 

 Since that time planting and seeding have become very general. 

 Everywhere one finds plantations of from five to fifteen years 

 of age giving signs of healthy and vigourous growth and 

 promising extensive crops of mature trees in due time. In 

 many of these plantations foresters tell us their plantings 

 yield 95 per cent, of healthy trees. 



As in Canada, so in Sweden, there are two schools of 

 foresters. One believes in leaving to Nature most of the work 



