EFFECTS OF BURNING FOREST. 
137 
rude economy would be continued for generations, and wasteful 
as it is, is still largely pursued in Northern Sweden, Swedish 
Lapland, and sometimes even in France and the United States.* 
character of the oak openings, is proved by the fact, that as soon as the 
Indians had left the country, young trees of many species sprang up and 
grew luxuriantly upon them. See a very interesting account of the oak 
openings in Dwight’s Travels , iv, pp. 58-63. 
* The practice of burning over woodland, at once to clear and manure 
the ground, is called in Swedish svedjande , a participial noun from the verb 
att svedja , to burn over. Though used in Sweden as a preparation for 
crops of rye or other grain, it is employed in Lapland more frequently to 
secure an abundant growth of pasturage, which follows in two or three 
years after the fire; and it is sometimes resorted to as a mode of driving 
the Laplanders and their reindeer from the vicinity of the Swedish back¬ 
woodsman’s grass grounds and haystacks, to which they are dangerous 
neighbors. The forest, indeed, rapidly recovers itself, but it is a genera¬ 
tion or more before the reindeer moss grows again. When the forest con¬ 
sists of pine, tall , the ground, instead of being rendered fertile by this 
process, becomes hopelessly barren, and for a long time afterward pro¬ 
duces nothing but weeds and briers.— L^estadius, Ora Uppodlingar i Lapp - 
marlcen , p. 15. See also Schubekt, Resa i Sverge, ii, p. 375. 
In some parts of France this practice is so general that Clav6 says: “ In 
the department of Ardennes it ( le sartage ) is the basis of agriculture. The 
northern part of the department, comprising the arrondissements of Rocroi 
and Mezi&res, is covered by steep wooded mountains with an argillaceous, 
compact, moist and cold soil; it is furrowed by three valleys, or rather 
three deep ravines, at the bottom of which roll the waters of the Meuse, 
the Semoy, and the Sormonne, and villages show themselves wherever the 
walls of the valleys retreat sufficiently from the rivers to give room to 
establish them. Deprived of arable soil, since the nature of the ground 
permits neither regular clearing nor cultivation, the peasant of the Ar¬ 
dennes, by means of burning, obtains from the forest a subsistence which, 
without this resource, would fail him. After the removal of the disposable 
wood, he spreads over the soil the branches, twigs, briars, and heath, seta 
fire to them in the dry weather of July and August, and sows in Septem¬ 
ber a crop of rye, which he covers by a light ploughing. Thus prepared, 
the ground yields from seventeen to twenty bushels an acre, besides a ton 
and a half or two tons of straw of the best quality for the manufacture of 
straw hats.”— Clave, Etudes sur VEconomie Forestibe , p. 21. 
Clave does not expressly condemn the sartage , which indeed seems the 
only practicable method of obtaining crops from the soil he describes, but, 
as we shall see hereafter, it is regarded by most writers as a highly per¬ 
nicious practice. 
