2o6 The Ottawa Naturalist. [February 



this fall (September, 1904) of visiting Woodstock, Vermont, where 

 Yale students of forestry have an excellent opportunity to study 

 young forests. 



" I have no hesitation in saying that it would be most inter- 

 esting to have yearly records of the life-history of some of the 

 individual trees of the Ironsides district, in order to ascertain 

 the normal as well as the best conditions which must prevail 

 in order to form fine timber trees, whether pine, spruce or poplar, 

 or even hardwood. Whether it would be advisable to reserve 

 just such a piece of country which thirty-four years ago was as 

 bare of vegetation as a billiard-ball or an egg, is a question which 

 it may be worth while for the Government to consider. 



" I have recently heard of a Canadian pine and conifer forest 

 growing in Germany which was seeded sixty years ago and is 

 now flourishing. Baron Fuerstenberg's father it was who planted 

 the seeds of Canadian conifers in Gammertingen, Germany, these 

 long years since, and I have learned that they now have a forest 

 worth while cutting. It would be interesting to ascertain the 

 quality and quantity of lumber that can be cut from these trees. 



" I would strongly advise anyone wishing to see a young 

 pine forest, to visit the thick woods of Ironsides, along the 

 line of the Canadian Pacific Railway between Ironsides station 

 and Chelsea, within the ' Ottawa District.' 



"H. M. Ami. 

 " Ottawa, Dec. 6th, 1904." 



Discussion. 



In the discussion which followed, Mr. W. T. Macoun 

 described the results of the experiments in tree-planting made at 

 the Central Experimental Farm in Ottawa since 1887. Here a 

 forest of the Scotch pine grows well. Several plantations of white 

 pine also had been made in three different ways : five feet apart, 

 ten feet apart, and with mixed trees. He remarked that shade 

 killed pine trees. Prof. Macoun remarked that poplar and birch 

 were the scrub in which pine delighted to grow. Poplars and 

 birches came and died, then the pines and elms survived and 

 flourished. He reiterated a statement made by him before the 

 Forestry Conference in Toronto, in 1903, to the effect that pine 

 trees grew from the seeds which came up out of the ground where 

 the squirrels and other small mammals had stored them. White 

 pine grew from decaying logs for the most part. Mr. Hamilton 

 stated that at the River Desert, up the Gatineau, in 1874, four 



