168 THE FOREST LANDS OF FINLAND. 
uirements, and that they are destined to pass away, 
and to become, as'other forests in other places have become, 
things of the past, as really so as the forests and jungles of 
old-world lycopods'and calamites, and cycads and conifers, 
the remains of'which constitute the coal measures of the 
present. And also, that the destruction of these existing 
forests, which I deplore, and fain would arrest in many 
districts, is not everywhere and always an unmixed evil. 
Consider what Central Europe must have been, and 
what must have been the condition of its savage inhabit- 
ants, when it was covered by one far extending forest ; 
look to it now, and consider the condition of its inhabit- 
ants, and: ‘say has the destruction. of the vast Hircinian 
forest been an unmixed evil? As is the case with Europe 
‘on avast scale, ‘such on a smail scale is it with Finland. 
Here there is not a little land, now pasture land and 
cultivated fields, which,. to make use of a common ex- 
pression, has been recovered from the forest. Towns and 
cities and public buildings now stand where once grew 
trees of the forest; and within the forest bounds there 
are, besides these, extensive clearings produced acci- 
dentally by storms sweeping over the land, carrying all 
before them or compelling them to bow and break, and 
let them pass. These in many instances have been made 
subservient to the support of man and beast; and I pre- 
sume that.no one will say that in these cases the destruction 
of the forest was unmixed evil. 
With regard to the immediate effects of Svedjande, it 
supplies, in the best possible condition, a soil such as 
the ground can yield. Of ground over which a forest 
fire has passed, Marsh writes :— 
‘Apart from the destruction of the trees and the laying 
bare of the soil, and consequently the free admission of 
sun, rain, and air, to the ground, the fire of itself exerts 
an important influence on its texture and condition. It 
cracks and even sometimes pulverises the rocks and stones 
on or near the surface ; it.consumes a portion of the half- 
