244 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



Canadian Department 



By Ellwood Wilson 

 Secretary Canadian Society of Forest Engineers 



The bill to amend the forest fire laws 

 of Quebec has passed third reading. 



P. Z. Caverhill, Director of Forest Sur- 

 vey of the Province of New Brunswick, 

 has commenced his important work of 

 mapping and estimating the timber lands 

 of that Province. Mr. Caverhill is attack- 

 ing this problem in a very practical and 

 thorough manner and his results will be 

 looked forward to with much interest. 



The Canadian Forestry Association has 

 brought out a very well gotten up "Boy 

 Scouts' Book" which gives information 

 about the forests, their use and protection, 

 which every boy should know, and is now 

 engaged in drawing up a set of examina- 

 tion questions which will entitle a scout, 

 after answering them successfully, to his 

 "Forest Badge." 



An appropriation was made for building 

 telephone lines to connect some of the 

 lookout towers erected last year and to 

 make other permanent improvements. A 

 committee was appointed to draw up a 

 form of order to be issued by all the mem- 

 bers to their foremen in charge of woods 

 operations, giving them instructions about 

 fighting fires, reporting them, guarding 

 against fires set by smokers and smudges 

 and by men coming into and going out 

 of the forest. The following officers were 

 elected: President, Ellwood Wilson, Lau- 

 rentide Company, Ltd.; vice-president, R. 

 E. Grant, St. Maurice Lumber Company; 

 Henry Sorgius, manager and secretary. 



J. F. L. Hughes, a student member of 

 the Canadian Society of Forest Engineers, 

 and formerly with the Laurentide Com- 

 pany, has been taking a course in avia- 

 tion and is now on his way to England to 

 continue his training. 



A letter recently received from Mr. 

 Stuart, formerly with the Laurentide Com- 

 pany, says that he has been eleven months 

 in the trenches near Ypres after spending 

 some time at Shornecliffe He says the 

 mud is terrible, but that otherwise there 

 is less hardship in the trenches than on a 

 forestry survey in the Canadian woods. 

 He is one of five sergeants left out of 

 an original sixty. 



George H. Mead, of Dayton, Ohio, has 

 been elected President of the Spanish River 

 Pulp and Paper Company. 



Letters recently received from foresters 

 in Spain and Sweden complain that Ameri- 

 can writers do not use the scientific names 

 of trees and plants, but only the common 

 names, which are of course unintelligible 

 to them. The scientific names should be 

 used much more freely than they are at 

 present. 



The Commission of Conservation has 

 just issued a book, "Altitudes in Canada," 

 compiled by Mr. James White, which gives 

 the altitudes above sea level of all the 

 most important places in the Dominion. 

 This represents a large amount of work, 

 and Mr. White is to be congratulated on 

 preparing a work which will be very use- 

 ful. 



The annual meeting of the Canadian 

 Pulp and Paper Association was held at 

 the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Montreal and 

 was a great success. The paper business 

 was reported to be in a flourishing condi- 

 tion and everyone was pleased with what 

 had been accomplished through coopera- 

 tion. Mr. J. H. A. Acer, of the Lauren- 

 tide Company, Ltd., was elected president. 

 The technical section meeting was very 

 interesting, one of the papers on welfare 

 work among mill employes being espec- 

 ially so. 



The Candian Pacific Railway will begin 

 the planting of trees along their eastern 

 lines to take the place of the snow fences 

 at present in use. This has already been 

 done on western lines with success. 



The Geo. A. Fuller Co., Ltd., of Mon- 

 treal, have obtained a contract to build 

 three mills for the St. Maurice Paper 

 Company, Ltd., at Cap Magdalaine, Que. 

 This company is a subsidiary of the Union 

 Bag and Paper Company, of Hudson Falls, 

 N. Y. 



The annual meeting of Mountain Lum- 

 bermen was held at Nelson, B. C, and 

 reports showed that the outlook was bet- 

 ter than for some years. Mr. C. D. Mc- 

 Nab, was elected president; Mr. A. J. 

 Lammars, vice-president, and Mr. I. R. 

 Poole, secretary-treasurer. 



The Crown Lands Department, of Nova 

 Scotia, reports about 13,000 acres burned 

 over during the season of 1915. 



The annual meeting and banquet of the 

 St. Maurice Forest Protective Association 

 was held at the Place Viger Hotel, Mon- 

 treal, recently. This was a very successful 

 meeting and the Association showed that 

 it had progressed during the past year. 



An article published in the Canadian Pulp 

 and Paper Magazine of March 1, written 

 by Mr. R. H. McKee, head of the Pulp 

 & Paper School, of the University of 

 Maine, about the possibility of obtaining 

 hybrid poplar trees which will grow very 

 much faster than the present species, opens 

 up a most interesting field for experiment. 

 If hybrid trees can be obtained which will 

 produce pulp wood in ten to twenty years 

 the industry would be placed on a new and 

 absolutely firm basis, with raw material 

 which would be much cheaper, and which, 

 being produced right at the mills, would 

 greatly reduce the present cost of trans- 

 portation. It is hoped that experiments 

 along this line will be undertaken at once. 



Lieut. Jos. Power, son of Mr. Wm. 

 Power, past president of the Canadian 

 Forestry Association, has returned from 

 nine months spent in the trenches in 

 Flanders, with nerves shattered. He spent 

 two months in the hospital in London and 

 has two months leave. His brother, Lieut. 

 Charles Power, is in hospital with eighteen 

 shrapnel wounds. 



The report of the Conservation Com- 

 mission, "Forest Protection in Canada, 

 1913-14," has just been issued and is a 

 very interesting volume. 



The 315-foot flag pole made of Douglas 

 fir, Pseudotsuga Mucronata, Sudw., re- 

 cently shipped from British Columbia to 

 Kew Gardens, London, Eng., arrived 

 safely. A London dispatch, referring to its 

 arrival, says: "Once the pride of a Brit- 

 ish Columbia forest, a 315-foot flag staff 

 now lies in the Thames off Kew Gardens." 

 The clerk at Kew wrote out a receipt for 

 215 feet of flag pole, on a two-inch piece 

 of paper: "Received in good condition, one 

 log." The adventures of the pole are by 

 no means at an end. The Garden authori- 

 ties are now faced with the big task of 

 raising it across the moat which bounds the 

 river front of the Gardens and then drag- 

 ging it a quarter of a mile to the mound 

 where the old pole stood for so many years. 



The Lower Ottawa Forest Protective 

 Association increased its area by 944,640 

 acres during 1915 and now patrols 8,504,320 

 acres. 155 fires were extinguished, and of 

 these 113 were put out without extra labor 

 by the ranger. 322 permits were issued 

 for burning slashings, and these fires were 

 supervised by the rangers. 



Timber is becoming so scarce in Eng- 

 land and high freights and scarcity of 

 ships have rendered the situation so acute, 

 that the War Office has asked the Cana- 

 dian Government to enlist a battalion of 

 woodsmen to cut timber in England. Re- 

 cruiting will start at once. Lt. Col. Alex. 

 McDougall, of Ottawa, will be in com- 

 mand. 



Mr. J. B. Tyrrell, F. G. S., has written, 

 for the February number of the Canadian 

 Forestry Journal, a very interesting ac- 

 count of the District of Paricia, a sec- 

 tion of 150,000 square miles to the north- 

 west of the Province of Ontario which has 

 just been given to that Province by the 

 Dominion Government. It has a popula- 

 tion of 3,000 Indians, nine whites, and will 

 cut about two cords of wood per acre. 



