eB Pik FOREST LANDS OF FINLAND. 
forests, and requiring labour to prepare it for culture, and 
care, and thought. Cultivation such as may be seen in 
civilised communities was not attainable by these people, 
were it only from their want of agricultural implements 
and manure. In the same book, on the page following, it 
is stated, “In these virgin soils, previously covered ‘with 
forest or bush, the produce of rye in the first year was ten 
fold —frequently twelve fold; and there were places— 
generally places where there had been old dense high 
forests—in which the produce was fifty fold, and in the 
second year the produce was from ten to fifteen fold.” ’ 
Section B—Forms ASSUMED BY THE PRACTICE 
IN OTHER LANDS. 
The practice is widely diffused. ‘It is a practice, says 
._M. Parade, formerly Director of the School of Forestry at 
Nancy, ‘extrémement 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 Surtage of France, the Kaski of 
Finland,and the Svedanje of Sweden appear as mere childish 
play. In the Canara district it is known as Koomaree. In 
a document issued by the Board of Revenue in India, in 
1859, it is stated that, in some parts of Bekel, which is 
the most southerly of the téluks of Canara, Koomaree cutting 
forms part of the business of the ordinary ryots, and as 
many as 25,746, or one-sixth of the population, are sup- 
osed to be engaged in it; but to the north of that téluk 
it is carried on by the jungle tribes of Malai Kadeos and 
Mahrattas, to the number of 59,500. Here we have up- 
wards 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 Koomaree cutter to renew the process, 
