1884.] FOREST MANAGEMENT IN CANADA. 53 



FOREST MANAGEMENT IN CANADA. 



BY EDWAKD JACK, C.E., OF XEW BEUXSWICK. 



r|"^HE Forestry Exhibition which has just closed, has been the 

 JL means of awakening much interest in that most important 

 subject, the protection and extension of forests ; and it is to be 

 hoped that great good will accrue, not only to Great Britain itself, 

 but also to the Colonies, from what has been done and learned 

 there. 



It might have been supposed that Canada, England's greatest 

 wood-producing colony, was now well advanced in the knowledge of 

 forest management, and that this science was fully imderstood there; 

 so far from such being the case, however, she has neither Forestry 

 Schools nor a Forestry Department. It is true that the different 

 provinces of the Dominion have their various Crown land offices 

 where timber leases are sold and timber dues collected, — these, with 

 the exception of plan-making and record-keeping, being the only 

 duties of the officers. 



By nnder-valuation of standing timber, the Governments of the 

 various provinces have so induced over-production, that the English 

 market is now flooded with sawn and hewn timber — wood cut 

 before it was required, whose cutting, manufacture, and exportation 

 have been done at a loss, as is evinced too frequently of late by the 

 bankruptcy of those engaged. There is no business in Canada 

 which is so subject to flnctuations, from over-production, as that of 

 timber-getting, and there is none which could inore easily be kept 

 within bounds. The title and alisolute control of the great body of 

 its timber lands being yet vested in the various Governments, these 

 have but to enact proper regulations, withdrawing certain sufficiently 

 large districts from the effects of the timber-man's axe, and 

 imposing proper charges on the logs when cut in other districts, 

 such as individual landholders would exact in payment for their 

 timber. Thus not only would the particular province be benefited 

 by protecting one of its sources of revenue and treating the public 

 property as carefully as if it were the property of an individual, 

 but the interests of the whole Empire would also lie advanced by 

 this conservation. Of so little value have the Canadian Crown 

 forests been heretofore considered, that the writer has within ten or 

 fifteen years frequently seen the right to cut for one year all the 

 spruce and pine timber standing on a thickly-wooded lot containing 

 640 acres, sold for less than two pounds sterling. Indeed, there is 

 to-dav on the statute books of Xew Brunswick, an Act which imposes 



