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is not very different from the rest of Europe. At
Uleåborg they are 22 hours, and in the northern part
of the Lapmark they are two or three months. In the
far north the concentrated light and heat of the long
days enable barley to mature in from six weeks’ to two
months’ time.
Now when peace has reigned for a long period;
when the country has had a relatively good and for
the last generation even an excellent government;
when science and intelligence have begun to surmount
the difficulties of nature; the progress and the increase
of production and wealth in Finland are really
wonderful. The average crops are double what they were a
generation ago. The export of butter has increased
to 30 million (Finnish) marks, and of wood to 100
millions; and statistics show an export of 18 million
marks’ worth of cellulose and pulp for paper. Wages are
still very low in some parts of the country, but in other
parts they have more than doubled, and are sometimes
as high as in America. The number of paupers in receipt
of relief has decreased in eight years from 110,000 to
68,000, partly owing to reformed poor-law administration,
but largely owing to economic progress.
According to the figures of the income-tax in towns,
small incomes have increased faster than large ones,
and the people live in much greater comfort than
formerly. Bread mixed with pine-bark and chopped
straw, which was once an ordinary article of food in
bad years and was generally eaten in some parts of
the country, is now no longer common. The ordinary
fare of the peasants is still very poor, consisting of
rye-bread baked twice a year, sour whey, sour milk, and
salt fish; the result of which diet is catarrh of the
stomach, whose most familiar symptom is the sallow
complexion so often visible in the country. But in
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