The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

FINLAND: POTOLATION. 223Industry is still in its infancy, four-fifths of the population being engagedexclusively in agriculture. Yet not more than the forty-fourth part of the landhas been brought under cultivation, all the rest consisting of dunes, fens, lakes,forests, or fallow tracts.* The yield of corn is inadequate to the demand, and flouris yearly imported from Russia in exchange for horses, cattle, milk, butter, cheese,fish, and game. But the staple exports are timber, tar, and resin. As in Sweden,the forests are consumed in the most reckless manner. About half of them belongto the Government, which, however, supplies less than one-fourth the quantity oftimber brought to the market by private enterprise.Most of the land is owned, if not by the actual tillers, at least by the peasantry.More than half of the agriculturists are either small farmers or day labourers, butFig. 108.—Nt-Slott.|S1HaSi&idtnyiS. &serfdom never existed in Swedish Finland. Several estates of the nobles,however, enjoy important privileges, and are not burdened to the same extent asthose held by the peasantry. The Crown lands are mostly leased to hereditaryholders, who have the right of purchasing them on conditions settled beforehandBy paying a three years' rent they become proprietors of the estates held by them.fFinland abounds in minerals, gold, silver, lead, zinc, copper, tin, and iron* 2 - 25 per cent, under tillage, 0-75 per cent, fallow, 5'7 per cent, forest, 40 per cent, water and waste.t In 1S75 the land was divided amongst 106,412 proprietors. The peasants owned 50,014,000; thoCrown, 35,275,749 ;noblemen, 5,S67,730 ; municipal corporations, 150,000 ; churches and monasteries,19,520 acres.