28 The Ottawa Naturalist. [May 



When a forest fire occurs there is a deplorable loss. The 

 forest is a great chemical laboratory, taking air, and earth, and 

 water, and combining them together for the use of the people. 

 Fire comes along, the laboratory is burned, wood production 

 stops and the people must do without. 



There is a common notion that the forest will restore itself, 

 and that valuable species of trees will by natural seeding again 

 cover the soil. Such hope is in most cases vain. Poplar and white 

 birch will probably occupy the ground; but the hope that the 

 spruce and the tamarac will again cover the soil is just a poetic 

 dream. These, to be sure, do reproduce in certain places and on 

 certain soils ; but if one observes carefully the conclusion is forced 

 upon him that this kind of reproduction of the conifers is not 

 going on with sufficient rapidity to furnish a perpetual supply of 

 timber to meet the demand of the country. If the conifers are 

 to be kept in the reserves in commercial quantity they will need 

 to be reproduced artificially, either by sowing the seed or planting 

 small trees. The Canadian Government has already begun thus 

 to provide for the future. 



The forest cannot be properly managed without the cutting 

 of trees. Like the farmer, the forester has his seed time and his 

 harvest. Agriculture produces food crops ; forestry, wood crops. 

 The lumberman harvests the natural wood crop, which Nature 

 has taken about two hundred years to produce; the forester 

 harvests an artificial one, which takes him about eighty years to 

 produce. The lumberman takes in his harvest everything from 

 which he can make present profit ; the forester leaves the smaller 

 trees in the forest to grow into future values. It is of no concern 

 to the lumberman if the falling timbers crush little trees or the 

 skidding tear them out by the roots. They offer no present 

 profit and he looks upon them as worthless; but the forester sees 

 in these voung trees his future harvest and gives them his most 

 earnest care. The lumberman's path has been full of fire. In 

 many places he has been followed by flaming forests and dense 

 clouds of smoke. But in the forester's tracks the green trees 

 grow, forests again flourish on the denuded wastes, and shed upon 

 the whole country their benign influences. 



REPORT OF THE ENTOMOLOGICAL BRANCH, 1908. 



The members of the Entomological Branch have been 

 active during 1908. The season on the whole from the collecting 

 standpoint was better than it has been for several years, not- 

 withstanding the continued drought which began in early June 

 and lasted well on into September. Many interesting species 



