A(jriculiural Tour in Denmark, Sweden, and Ilussia. 197 
with tracts of flat and reedy swamps of lar^^er extent, more or loss 
susceptible of a perfect drainaf^e. The conversion of these and 
similar swampy spots into available land forms one of the most 
important undertakings to which the improving agriculture of 
Sweden has given rise. 
On leaving the vale of the Gotha, the naked rocks become 
covered with a thin herbage. In the hollows the soil deepens, 
and is often of better quality ; but where extensive flats occur on 
the higher ground, they are either covered by woods of pine, or 
form a more or less inhospitable tract of moor. In some parts of 
Sweden these flats extend almost continuously over many hundreds 
of square miles. Covered with a clayey soil to the depth of 
from 2 to 12 inches, they bear those still and dreary forests of 
pine through which the traveller, in crossing the country from 
Christiania to Stockholm, may pass for fifty miles at a stretch 
without hearing a sound but that caused by his own carriage, or 
seeing a living thing except in the neighbourhood of the post- 
houses. On these flats limited crops of corn are here or there 
raised. A few acres of the wood along the road are burned 
down, the ashes are strewed over the land, rye is sown and har- 
rowed in, and after one or two crops the spot is again left to 
nature. Birch-trees first spring up, these are gradually sup- 
planted by the pine, and all traces of cultivation are gradually 
obliterated. Another of the obvious improvements which Swedish 
agriculture is now undergoing is the permanent cutting down of 
the forest where the soil is deep, and, by a more skilful and less 
exhausting system of culture, the conversion of the more acces- 
sible spots into regular tillage or grazing farms. But in Sweden 
there is a limit beyond which this extirpation of the forest cannot 
be carried, even where the soil is good. The climate is severe, 
the winters are long, and much fuel is required ; here and there 
peat occurs, but in Sweden generally the chief dependence is 
upon wood. The fences also are almost universally formed of 
wood, and hence the price of a farm, or the rent it will bring, is 
in this country regulated in a very great degree by the quantity 
of woodland which it contains.* 
Amona: the facts which strike the agricultural stranger on his 
arrival in one of the rocky districts of Sweden is the readiness 
with which the young pines take root on the apparently naked 
sides of the rocks, and gradually clothe it with an almost unin- 
terrupted forest. I had an opportunity of becoming satisfied of 
this fact during a short visit in the neighbourhood of Gothenburg. 
My friend had built a house in a pretty situation, with some good 
low land attached to it. The lower swellings of the granitic rocks 
* One-half wood is the proportion which, brings the largest price. 
