1885. J THE DESTRUCTION OF CANADIAN FORESTS. 229 

 TEE DESTRUCTION OF CANADIAN FORESTS. 



BY IIENKY F. MOORE, FROME, SOMERSET. 



IN Mr. J. H. Morgan's first preliminary lleport to the Canadian 

 Government, which has been just issued, he points out the 

 reckless and destructive waste of the great forests of Canada and of 

 the adjoining States, by fire and by the axe-man, and specially the 

 rapidity with which the vast pine and spruce forests of Ontario and 

 Quebec are being exhausted. In the United States the danger 

 threatened by the destruction of the forests is so great that the 

 attention of Congress was recently called to the matter in the Presi- 

 dential Message; while the Secretary of the Interior says the rapidity 

 with which that country is being stripped of its forests must alarm 

 every thinking man, it being estimated on good authority, that at the 

 present rate of cutting, the supply of timber will, in less than twenty 

 years, fall considerably short of the country's necessities. In his 

 address before the American Forestry Congress, at St. Paul, Minn., 

 in August last, the Honourable George B. Loring, late United 

 States Commissioner of Agriculture, said the destruction of the pine 

 and spruce timber-supply was going on so rapidly that it would be 

 necessary to allow the exhausted region to recuperate, while the 

 comparatively uncut sections were resorted to to meet the demands 

 of the market. Eecent investigations showed that the supply of 

 pine in New Hampshire and Vermont was exhausted ; that the 

 supply of spruce in the former State would last but 4 years, and 

 in* the latter 7 ; in Maine, pine would last 4 years, spruce 

 1 5 years ; in South Carolina, pine would last 5 years ; in 

 California, 150; Georgia, 80; Louisiana, 100; North Carolina, 

 5 ; Mississippi, 150; Alabama, 9 ; Florida, 3 ; Texas, 250; 

 Wisconsin, 20; Minnesota, 10 ; Michigan, 10 ; Arkansas, 50 years. 

 Mr. Loring says there is no doubt that the exhausted forests 

 in these States can be restored in time. Commenting cin the 

 above, Mr. Morgan points out that no allowance is made for destruc- 

 tion of forests by fire, nor is any reference made to the fact that 

 lumbering in the Southern States has recently received an impetus 

 which will add largely to the denudation of the land ; that some 

 Canadian lumbermen have been investing largely in timber lands in 

 Arkansas and Louisiana, and are now actively engaged there in 

 making and rafting timber; and that so soon as the railroads pene- 

 trate these hitherto untouched forests, the work of destruction there, 

 similar to that which exhausted the supply in the older States, will, 

 unless checked by wise legislation, very soon give cause for alarm. 



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