SWEDEN 89 



of the finest quality probably existing in the world. 

 The more accessible ar^s have been worked to 

 furnish the growing export trade with Britain, 

 Germany, and other North European countries. 

 But a fringe of the fine forests has, however, been 

 touched, amounting in value received on an average 

 to a few kopecks per acre only for the more accessible 

 areas. The rest were classed as inaccessible alike by 

 the late Russian Government, who took no steps to 

 open them out owing to the absence of the necessary 

 capital, and by timber merchants, who stuck close 

 to their old methods of extraction, and were shy of 

 tackling new fields. 



The material is there, and I propose to return to 

 Russia later on. 



Sweden. — For ytars past Sweden has remained 

 one of our chief suppliers of soft woods. These 

 imports commenced in the middle of last century, 

 when she took up the trade. With the removal 

 of our import duties on foreign timber in 1866, 

 Sweden's opportunity arrived, and she spent a large 

 sum of money in opening out her forests, by the 

 improvement of her river beds and waterways, to 

 permit of timber floatage, and in the erection of 

 extraction works to enable the timber to be got out 

 by cheaper and quicker methods. The Government 

 also initiated a system of fifty-year leases to timber 

 merchants, and a form of lumbering sprang up in her 

 forests which persisted for half a century. It was 

 only early in the present century that the Swedish 

 Government realized that she was killing her goose ; 

 that the old lease policy was a fatal one to the main- 



