60 THE FOREST LANDS OF FINLAND. 
these people for a long time back have been possessed. 
with the idea that woods are of no pecuniary value, and 
they destroy them recklessly. When the annual allot- 
ment happens to be less than they think they require for 
building material—or it may be for fancy erections which 
they do not require—they frequently go off to the woods 
and cut what they want without ever applying for per- 
mission to do so, And then the question comes up—is it 
possible for the people to acquire at the present time any 
adequate idea of the necessity which there is for the con- 
servation of the forests and the exploitation of them in a 
rational or scientific way? Let any one realise the case. 
Around all of these villages, even the smallest of them, 
there are forests of which the eye can see no end, they 
appear to be interminable; and there are depths of them 
to which the foot of man has never penetrated. The 
extent of these forests is such that to the peasantry they 
seem inexhaustable; while, on the other hand, the severity 
of the climate, the unproductiveness of the soil, and the 
poverty of the people, are such as to seem to call upon 
every one to find out for himself with a hatchet in his 
hand, any means of improving his condition. 
‘The natural condition of the country could not have 
called forth or exercised upon the people an effect more to 
be deplored. 
‘ The peasantry here look upon wood as being in common 
with earth and air, fire and water, one of the elements, and 
as equally free to all persons; and they consequently con- 
sider that they are free to use it without stint or limit, 
as one of the free gifts of nature. This state of things, 
originating, as I have intimated, from the physical con- 
dition of the country, can only be changed or destroyed by 
the great change-producer, time; and: the reports of the 
consequent destruction of the forests embrace numerous 
details of the extension in the country of the practice of 
Sartage or Svedanje, This system of felling is here very 
frequently met with; but if we enter into the circum- 
stances of the case, considering, on the one hand, the 
