1885.] FACTS RESPECTING CANADIAN FORESTRY. 41 7 



RECENT FACTS AND OPINIONS RESPECTING 

 CANADIAN FORESTRY. 



BY EDWARD JACK, NEW BRUNSWICK. 



WHEN" in Edinburgh last summer, I had the pleasure of hear- 

 ing Dr. Lyons, M.P. for Dublin, lecture, when it appeared 

 to me that his views with regard to Canadian Forestry were of an 

 optimist stamp. T. K., in January's number of Forestry, however, 

 charges him with " pessimistic views as to future supplies (of wood) 

 from abroad." So far as the wood production of New Brunswick is 

 concerned. Dr. Lyons has not sounded the note of alarm one moment 

 too soon. In corroboration of this, the writer, who is a Crown 

 land surveyor, and who also has been for many years an explorer of 

 timber, submits the following facts derived from actual observation. 

 T, K. says " that spruce reproduces itself with great rapidity, that 

 it grows on poor land that will not pay to plough." In this he is 

 correct, but unfortunately he forgot to add that on spruce land, fire 

 usually follows the axe to a greater or less extent. The black 

 spruce, which has been the variety chiefly exported from New 

 Brunswick, frequently grows on dry and barren land, often among 

 moss-covered boulders, and where a spark from a pipe might cause 

 a conflagration which would destroy vast forests ; more especially 

 after logs have been cut, as the large tops are left in the woods, and 

 these in the hot summer weather, unfortunately offer ready food to 

 the devouring flame. We have no foresters in New Brunswick, and 

 the woods are left to protect themselves. If these woods were 

 placed in the care of foresters, many great fires would have been 

 prevented, as they can often be checked or extinguished by digging 

 a trench, or by other proper means. We have neither foresters nor 

 forestry schools in Canada, though Japan has ; and there seems to 

 be no probability that we wiU have either for years, as our people 

 are dead to the subject. With us it is all " Cut down," " No pro- 

 tection," " Let the future look after itself." 



More than two-thirds of tlie great black spruce belt which once 

 covered New Brunswick has been utterly destroyed by fire, so that 

 it will give no saw-logs ; and the trees which are being cut on what 

 is left of this are, in general, not more than half of the size of those 

 which New Brunswick once produced, showing thus that what is 

 left is passing away fast. 



Let any one ask at the Miramichi timber boom how many logs 

 it takes to make a thousand feet B. M. now, and then let him com- 

 pare this with the number which it took ten years ago, and he will 



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