Reclamation Work. 235 
The reclamation of shifting sands and sand dunes 
has also received considerable attention and, to some 
extent, the reboisement of mountain slopes in the Crimea 
and Caucasus. Of the former some 10 million acres are 
in existence and for 50 years sporadical work in their 
recovery was done, but only in 1891 and 1892, when two 
droughty famine years had led to an investigation of 
agricultural conditions was a systematic attempt pro- 
posed, and this was begun in 1897. By 1902 some 80,000 
acres had been fixed. In addition 1,500 square miles 
of swamps in Western Russia were reclaimed by ex- 
tensive canals and recovered with meadow and forest 
at a cost of $300,000, of which the Imperial Treasury 
paid one-third, the owners one-half, the local govern- 
ment the balance. 
While rational forest management, as we have seen, 
is far from being generally established, the government 
tries at least to prevent waste and to pave the way from 
exploitation to regulated management. 
FINLAND. 
Finland, the “land of a thousand lakes” and of most 
extensive forests (over 50 per cent.), is hardly less im- 
portant as a wood producer than Russia itself; its 
wood exports amounting at present to around 170 mil- 
lion cubie feet and over 20 million dollars in value, 
represent over 50 per cent. of its trade and its most im- 
portant resource. 
Settled in the 7th century by an Aryan tribe, the 
Finns, congeners of the Magyars, who subdued the 
aboriginal Laplanders, Finland became by conquest in 
the 12th century, and remained for 500 years, a prov- 
