SOME REFLECTIONS UPON CANADIAN FORESTRY 

 PROBLEMS ^ 



By C. D. Howe 



Associate Professor of Forestry, Faculty of Forestry, University of 



Toronto 



During the past few months I have had occasion to read the briefs- 

 and reviews of the European, especially German and Austrian, silvi- 

 cultural literature as presented from time to time in the various for- 

 estry journals, and I have been impressed — amazed, in fact — by the 

 great mass of contradictory evidence in silvicultural practice. A for- 

 ester in a certain district, with certain aspect, certain soil conditions, 

 and a definite local climate, makes an unqualified success of a certain 

 silvicultural system. He sends an article about it to a forestry journal, 

 or, if he is a man of more than ordinary energy, he writes a book 

 around his practice and presents the system as the long-sought- for, 

 universally applicable restorer and recuperator of his country's de- 

 pleted and mismanaged forests. A forester in another district with a 

 different set of climatic and soil conditions finds that his experience 

 with the same system has not been as happy as that of his neighbor; 

 perhaps it has been a complete failure ; so he writes an article to the 

 forestry journal denouncing that particular silvicultural practice. 

 Others take up the argument pro and con and words flow in torrents. 

 Often the original case is lost sight of and the debate wanders over the 

 whole field of economics and forestry. There seems to be little agree- 

 ment as to best methods of silvicultural treatment, even of similar 

 stands in similar situations. 



I was also impressed by the apparent fact that silviculture is not on 

 a biological basis, even in Germany and Austria, which have given us 

 most, if not all, of our biological theories with regard to the behavior 

 of trees in the forest. There is a great preponderance in literature of 

 opinion evolved from the office chair over that of action derived from 

 field observation and experimentation. Practice is very largely by rule 

 of thumb without a knowledge of the fundamental principles. 



Therefore, it seems to me, leaving out of consideration the diff'er- 



^A paper read at the Eleventh Annual Meeting of the Canadian Society of 

 Forest Engineers, Montreal, January 29, 1919. 



29.0 



