CANADIAN DEPARTMENT 



759 



CANADIAN DEPARTMENT 



ELLWOOD WILSON, SECRETARY. 



CANADIAN SOCIETY OF 



FOREST ENGINEERS 



It is axiomatic that a man has a right to 

 do what he likes with his own property. 

 This right has been curtailed to the extent 

 that the use a man makes of his property 

 shall not injure the public or his neighbor. 

 A man owning a tree may cut it down, but 

 he must see that it does not fall on his 

 neighbor's fence or house or otherwise dam- 

 age his property. Further than this the 

 Government has decreed that it has the 

 right to protect a watershed of a navigable 

 stream or of the water supply of a city by 

 preventing the cutting of timber which 

 would injure it. The State of New York 

 has taken the position that a man may not 

 cut his timber and leave his slash in such 

 condition as to be a menace to other tim- 

 ber lands. Will not the time soon come, 

 when realizing the long time element in 

 the growing of timber and the fact that it 

 takes more than one generation to grow a 

 merchantable tree, the State will hold that 

 no timber owner shall have the right to cut 

 his timber without making adequate pro- 

 vision for its replacement, in time, except 

 in the case of agricultural land where total 

 clearing is a necessity. The case in the ex- 

 ample of government-owned lands on which 

 cutting rights are leased or sold is fairly 

 clear, but is it a very great extension of the 

 principle to ask that every man who comes 

 into possession of timber land and wishes 

 to use it as such, should be compelled to 

 plant a tree for everyone he cuts. There is 

 only one objection to such a policy from 

 the selfish standpoint of the owner, and 

 that is the cost. But here, just as in the 

 case of private property taken for public 

 ends, the general community should be 

 willing to pay the ultimate cost by paying 

 the enhanced price of the timber caused bv 

 the expense of replacing it for the future. 

 As Professor Tourney has so well said, the 

 question of replanting, in the very essence 

 of things, is a matter for the public, and it 

 should bear some part of the cost. Let the 

 timber owner take the responsibility of re- 

 planting and let the community foot the 

 bill, in increased timber prices. 



The value of preparedness has been 

 splendidly demonstrated in Canada. For 

 the past few years the Commission of Con- 

 servation has been making an inventory of 

 the kinds and location of timber in British 

 Columbia. This past month the Govern- 

 ment wanted to know where to get spruce 

 for airplanes, .\pplying to the Commis- 

 sion, they were told at once, not only where 

 to get it, but there was a man ready to 

 show them. Mr. Craig, who has been in 

 charge of this work, was immediately at- 

 tached to the Imperial Munitions Board 

 and will look after this work. The Com- 

 mission is pressing for an inventory of tim- 



ber in Ontario and Quebec and it is hoped 

 that the work will commence next summer. 

 The preliminary report of the Commis- 

 sion on the condition of cut-over pulpwood 

 lands, and the prospects of a future crop, 

 -lias been made by Dr. Howe, of the Uni- 

 versity of Toronto. It is very interesting 

 and significant. The lands in question are, 

 like practically all forests from which pulp- 

 wood is cut, covered with mixed stands of 

 spruce, balsam and hardwood. At first only 

 the spruce was cut, then the loggers went 

 back and took off smaller spruce and an 

 increasing amount of balsam, and on the 

 last cut nearly 78 per cent of balsam was 

 taken to 22 per cent of spruce. Such cut- 

 ting, of course, favors the growth of hard- 

 woods and leaves them predominant in the 

 stand, overshadowing and suppressing the 

 young spruce and balsam left. It is shown 

 that, under these conditions existing on 

 the lands, it takes 40 years for the little 

 spruce trees to grow one inch in diameter, 

 100 years to make a six-inch tree and 150 

 years to reach the minimum diameter of 12 

 inches established by the cutting regula- 

 tions in Quebec. Balsam grows somewhat 

 faster. One inch in diameter is reached in 

 about 16 years and seven inches at about 

 70 years. These statements refer to the 

 time required to make a merchantable for- 

 est from the seedling stage onward. There 

 are on the average 30 spruce and 59 bal- 

 sam trees per acre from four to eight inches 

 in diameter already present. These will 

 furnish another crop in time, but the time 

 is long. The growth tables show that it 

 will require about 70 years for the four- 

 inch trees and about 50 years for the 

 eight-inch trees to reach the 12-inch diame- 

 ter limit. The larger balsam, however, 

 will be merchantable in 10 years. There are 

 only six spruce and six balsam trees over 

 eight inches diameter on the average acre. 

 This number is too small to justify exploi- 

 tation alone, so that the next cutting must 

 be delayed until a sufficient number of the 

 smaller trees reach a merchantable size. 

 On these heavily culled lands it will proba- 

 bly be found that henceforward a period of 

 from 30 to 60 years must elapse between 

 cuttings, if only spruce and balsam are to 

 be removed. Unless the hardwoods are ^o 

 be removed and thus give the soft woods a 

 chance, it will prove cheaper and more ex- 

 peditious to plant trees, rather than to 

 wait for the next cut furnished by nature. 



The report of the St. Maurice Forest 

 Protective Association for 1917 is in and 

 shows that a total of 4,367 acres werfe 

 burned over this summer, only 287 acres of 

 which were in merchantable timber. Cut- 

 over areas and old burns showed 2,272 and 

 1,592 acres respectively, again demonstra- 

 ting the fact that cut-over land is the worst 

 hazard and the land which most needs pro- 

 tection. This cannot be efficiently given 

 until some system of slash disposal is puj 

 in force. The cost of extinguishing fires by 

 extra labor has dropped from $13,001 in 

 1914 to $1,050 this year, showing very 

 forcibly that most of our fires were extin- 



guished in their incipiency by the rangers 

 The causes of fires were as follows : 



Railways 122 



Section Men 4 



Unknown 38 



Construction Work 26 



Drivers 5 



Dam Builders 8 



Fishermen 8 



Settlers 4 



Jobbers 2 



Total 217 



The forest survey of New Brunswick is 

 making good progress under Director G, 

 H. Prince. Nine hundred and twenty- 

 five thousand acres have been mapped this 

 year, making a total of 1,200,000 acres since 

 the start of the survey, or about 16 per 

 cent, of the total area of Crown land in the 

 province. The Forestry Department will 

 co-operate in the scaling and logging in- 

 spection this winter. 



H. R. MacMillan has gone with Canadian 

 Aeroplanes, Ltd., a branch of the Imperial 

 Munitions Board, to take charge of pro- 

 ''uring spruce for airplanes. 



The secretary of the Canadian Forestry 

 Association is making a lecture tour 

 through the Province of New Brunswick. 

 He is having large audiences and much 

 interest is shown in his work. 



In Alberta the Dominion Forest Service 

 has built about 20 miles of telephone line 

 and carried on its program of trail build- 

 ing. Four of the Alberta men are reported as 

 having joined the "Boys at the Front" lately. 

 In the Crowsnest Pass a fire occurred 

 during the past summer which cost $4,500 to 

 extinguish. R. H. Roberts, assistant to In- 

 spector Gutches, is going overseas with the 

 20th U. S. Engineers (Forest). Prof. W. 

 N, Millar, late of the University of To 

 ronto, is with the 10th U. S. Engineers 

 (Forest), which is officered and largely 

 manned by United States Forest Service 

 men. 



A bulletin has been published in .Austra- 

 lia giving the details of the investigations 

 of Mr. D. W. Paterson into the paper pulp 

 situation, and his recommendations. He 

 recommended that spruce and poplar should 

 be planted in the high altitudes of Victoria 

 in proximity to water powers available for 

 pulp mills. He said that spruce could be 

 first cut for pulp after 15 years and that 

 900 acres would supply the needs of Aus- 

 tralia for one year. His advice was that 

 2.000 acres be planted the first year and 

 1,000 acres yearly after that until the first 

 planted trees were ready for cutting. After 

 an area is cut it is to be replanted and thus 

 a continuous supply of timber insured, as it 

 is not economical to cut pulpwood from 

 mixed forests and that only pure stands 

 will pay. Mr. Paterson's estimate is that 

 the profit realized after 15 years, including 

 interest on capital and all costs, other than 

 payment for the land, provided cheap water 

 power was available, would be $120 per 

 acre. 



