SOMK REFLECTIONS UPON CANADIAN FORlvSTRN' PKOHLEMS 291 



ences in climatic, forest, and economic conditions, that we only waste 

 time in attempting slavishly to apply European experience to our own 

 forests. We must work out our- own problems. We cannot borrow 

 methods from any one else, not even from the United States, for our 

 conditions are different. Every forest type, every river valley within 

 a type, presents its own problems ; in fact, with species not floated every 

 five miles from the market, presents its own problem of management 

 and silvicultural treatment. Not only this, if we wish to attain con- 

 tinuous production, our methods must have a biological basis ; but 

 before we can establish any general principles we must know what 

 actually happens under given conditions. And we do not know that. 



As foresters, we are woefully ignorant of the forest. I think we 

 should spend less time and energy in discussing theories and more time 

 in ascertaining facts. We call forestry a science, but there is little 

 justification for that term. There is not a theory or a practice in the 

 profession that is based upon the amount or the kind of evidence that 

 a biologist, chemist, or physicist would demand as the basis of a work- 

 ing principle. In fact, each year evidence is accumulating that may 

 lead us to modify the fundamental basis of present silvicultural prac- 

 tice, namely, the light relation of trees. Already we have to make so 

 many concessions to other factors that the term is a misnomer. Hux- 

 ley said: "Speculation that outstrips evidence is not only a blunder but 

 a crime." Speculation with insufficient data to support it has been one 

 of the chief deterrents to the practice of forestry as a science. 



Again, I say, we need more data. We as foresters stand almost 

 naked in our knowledge of what goes on in the forest, considering the 

 forest as a group of living individuals. We are probably approaching 

 the end of our supply of sawlogs from virgin forests in the East. Our 

 future supply must come from the so-called second growth. Do we 

 know from actual measurement whether there is going to be any second 

 growth of commercial species; if so, at what periods and how much 

 we can cut? There are places where a diameter limit has been more 

 or less vigorously observed for a number of years ; do we know by 

 actual measurement what the result has been in terms of the next 

 harvest? Slash disposal has been carried on in various places, but have 

 we taken sufficient interest to find out what really happens by actual 

 measurement of the conditions, although we may have consumed reams 

 of paper in discussing the subject? It is the custom of the lumberman 

 to cull the forest to dift'erent degrees according to the density of the 

 stand. He has been doing this now for thirty or forty years, and yet 



