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CONDITIONS AND POSSIBILITIES OF PRODUCTION IN TI1E VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 7
form not very accessible for plants. New discoveries and new methods
in recent times seem, however, to render possible its utilization. If
this result were attained, a great source of wealth would be open up for
Sweden; yet no one can foresee the result with certainty.
INitrogen can certainly not be extracted from the earth, but with the
aid of the electric energy generated by water-power it is now taken from
the atmosphere and combined with the country’s abundant supply of
lime.
Here and there in the rocks of Sweden other valuable deposits of
different kinds are also to be found. We have been able to indicate above
only the largest and most important.
Generally speaking, it can nevertheless be said that Sweden is
by no means poorly endowed. The absence of gold has certainly been
detrimental to economic development. The mobile capital which even
moderate resources of this kind directly bestow upon a country, and which
supports and stimulates enterprise in various spheres has not been easily
obtainable in Sweden, but has had to be won by laborious effort.
Meanwhile, (especially in the matter of the really superior natural resources —
iron-ores and granites) the problem may be said to have emerged from the
preliminary difficulties, and abundant possibilities of development very
certainly loom in a not very remote future.
Conditions and possibilities of production in the Vegetable Kingdom.
Among the natural conditions which in any country govern the
cultivation of useful commodities from the vegetable kingdom, the original
composition of the soil, on the one hand, and the climate, on the other, must
be considered before anything else.
Over a large portion of Sweden the soil consists of difficultly cultivated
moraine soil, unsuitable peat-mosses, or rocky soil useless for cultivation.
Only within certain boundaries, pre-eminently the stretches of coast-land,
wellsituated from the point of view of communications, has man been, so
to speak, invited to settle down as a farmer. By far the greater part of the
country has had to be left under timber.
But certain parts, the plains of Skåne (intended by nature to be the
finest agricultural soil bestowed upon this continent), as well as other
districts of the country where rocks with strata rich in lime have
originated a soil remarkably well adapted to cultivation. Tn these places, too,
the old, wealthy tracts are to be found. Unfortunately, however, the area
of these districts is but 8—9 % of the entire country. The soil in the
remaining parts of the country is poor on the whole, when we consider
the amount of nutrition cultivated plants require, if they are to be brought
to produce rich crops. The fact is also proved by the small proportion of
the country, which has been laid under the plough, viz., about 10 % of
the 35-2 millions of hectares, which are situated below the forest limit.
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