PRIMITIVE TREATMENT OF FORESTS. 59 
Stockholm in 1823, in 3 vols. 8vo; and from what is 
said by Lars Levi Laestadius, in his work entitled ‘Om 
Mojligheten och Férdelen af Allmainna Uppodlingar i 
Lappmarken, published in Stockholm 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. 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 back- 
woodsman, to which they are dangerous neighbours. The 
forest rapidly recovers itself, but it is generally a genera- 
tion or more before the reindeer moss grows again. When 
a forest consists of pine (¢all) 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. 
It is practised to some extent in the regions contiguous 
to Finland, and to a district inhabited by the Karelians, a 
Finnish tribe divided by the frontier boundary between 
Russia and the Grand Duchy. M. Judrae, an able member 
of the Forest Service of Russia, in a narrative of a tour of 
inspection of the forests of Olonetz and Archangel made by 
him, thus writes of the practice :— 
‘In reading the reports of the Government Office of the 
Imperial Domaines, one is arrested involuntarily at a place 
which treats of unathorised fellings carried on without 
leave or sanction. / 
‘According to these reports the population of the 
government consists almost exclusively of those who were 
Crown serfs and their children, whose requirements of 
wood for fuel and building are sufficiently met by the 
allotments made to them annually from the forests; but 
