ii6 THE FORESTS OF FINLAND 



more widespread than the pine. In other parts of the 

 country, such as Ilonjantsi and Korpiselka, great 

 stretches of spruce forest exist ; and here, doubtless 

 owing to the presence of extensive swamps and deep 

 ravines, fire was never able to spread to any great 

 extent, so that the spruce forests were never destroyed 

 by this agency. Another agency, probably even more 

 destructive than fire, was the pernicious custom of 

 " shifting cultivation." A patch of forest was felled ; 

 the felled trees were fired, and the burnt ashes strewn 

 over the area ; and one or more successive agricultural 

 crops were then raised upon it. As soon as the area 

 no longer yielded a satisfactory crop without under- 

 taking a more intensive cultivation of the soil, the 

 cultivator moved on to another patch of forest, which 

 he treated in the same fashion. The spruce forests 

 were the first to be dealt with in this fashion, because 

 they occupied the best soil. When the cultivator left 

 the area, it was seized upon and rapidly covered by 

 the light-seeded birch. Where the cultivation had 

 taken place on drier areas of poorer soil, the pine 

 subsequently appeared. Of all methods of cultiva- 

 tion this system is the most pernicious. 



But the birch forests were not the only result of 

 treating areas of better-class soil in this fashion. When, 

 in course of time, the birch forests were in their turn 

 felled and burnt for a like purpose, the birch gave place 

 to forests of white alder ; and the more often the 

 burning took place on such areas, the purer became 

 the resultant alder forest, owing to the fact that the 

 alder reproduces itself by sucker and coppice shoots, 

 and that these grow quicker than seedling birch, and 



