FOREST ADMINISTRATION. 131 
century was the treatment of them brought under satis- 
factory control. 
According to one writer on Finland in the , first 
half of the present century: ‘Wherever the population 
tion is sparse, few in number, and widely scattered, and 
there is more of forests than can be put to good use by 
the inhabitants, the management or treatment of the 
forests is very bad. In Finland the population numbers 
400 to the square mile, and as yet everything is left to 
nature; management there is none. Until of late years 
forests were of very little value, and accordingly they 
received little or no attention from the peasants. And 
this being the case, in dry summers fires were very com- 
mon, and little trouble was taken to extinguish them. ; 
But now the people have begun to manifest a better 
appreciation of their worth. From of old has it been, 
enjoined by law that the forests should be protected; but 
the duty has been neglected.’ 
‘Frequently, says another writer, ‘ are extensive ravages 
committed by conflagrations occasioned by the carelessness 
of the peasants in smoking their pipes and making fires 
in the woods, and sometimes, it is suspected, intentionally 
kindled from an interested motive, as the inhabitants are 
allowed to cut down,,for their own use, any trees in the 
king’s forests which have been injured by the burning.’ 
Both statements are in accordance with what I learned 
in connection with my enquiries relative to Svedjande. 
There, as elsewhere, it is a grand spectacle which is 
presented by a large forest in flames, and there is some- 
thing awe-inspiring in the crash of trees falling, and 
spreading more widely and rapidly the devouring fire. But 
in many cases little or nothing is done to arrest the confla- 
gration. The trees are of little pecuniary value; scarcely 
would the wood repay the expense of transport where no 
stream is near; nor is it to the poorer inhabitants such a 
loss as it would be to others. In accordance with the 
practice of Svedjande they scatter the ashes over the soil, 
sow it with rye, roughly harrow it, and for two or three 
