242 KALM S ENGLAND. 



which is ascribed to the sheep-dung which they may have 

 dropped on these places, or to some other manuring 

 thing. 



Hum Bokar fallas omkllll. How Beeches are felled 

 to the ground. 



In this district the beech is the most plentiful of all 

 trees. It is seldom cut down with an axe, but is sawn 

 down with a long saw. The saw-cut is made quite close 

 to the ground, or scarcely a hand's-breadth above the 

 same. When somewhat more than half the tree has been 

 thus sawn through, and it begins by its weight to press 

 down on the sawblade so that it cannot be drawn for- 

 wards or backwards, they drive in iron wedges into the 

 kerf or rift, halet eller rannan, which the sawblade has 

 made, and thus lift up the tree on one side, so that it 

 cannot hinder the saw-blade by its weight. 



Bokars sonder-sagning och sag-spans nytta. 



The sawing up of beeches and the use of the sawdust. 



In one of the fields a carl was engaged in sawing up 

 beeches into small boards [T. I. p. 243] to be used for 

 shovels, skofflar. They had dug a pit, et hal, down in the 

 ground, in the way which has been described on p. 220 

 (orig.), over which they laid the stocks, stackarnar ; when 

 they were sawing, one carl always stood down in the pit, 

 gropen. The tree was sawed first into logs, klabbar, 

 of 3 feet long, these again into such small and thin boards 

 as were required. The logs which had been sawn across 

 were stood up on end, so that the one end stood down on 

 the earth and the other up in the air. The upper end 

 was covered for nearly an inch thick with the sawdust, 

 sag-span, which fell during the sawing. This was done 

 with the object of preventing the log from forming any 

 cracks or fissures from the sun. I asked whether this 



