SOME REFLECTIONS UPOX CAXADIAX FORESTRV PROBLEMS 293 



been made. This is important, not only from the standpoint of repro- 

 duction, but also from its influence upon insect and fungous diseases. 

 Regeneration and rate of growth after forest fires should be recorded 

 by sample plots where the exact history of the fire is known. Natural 

 regeneration by the strip system, group system, and by the scattered 

 seed-tree system should be tested by actual experimental plots. An 

 essential part of every sample-plot investigation should be growth 

 studies, with predictions of future yields under the given conditions. 



You see, I have laid out an extensive program, and I have mentioned 

 only what seem to me the immediate and most obvious things. 



Until we have done these things, although performing a verv impor- 

 tant, necessary, and patriotic work, we cannot claim to be foresters. 

 Business men could do all that we are doing for the forests of Canada 

 today and they would probably do it much better. In fact, manv of 

 our best administrative officers, from the head down along the line, 

 have not had a forestry training. The only excuse for employing for- 

 esters or for training foresters is that they shall apply scientific knowl- 

 edge to the making of a forest continuously productive. How many 

 of us could apply such knowledge derived from our own forests? We 

 have been talking about forestry for thirty years and, with the excep- 

 tion of planting operations, there is little or no forestry practiced in 

 Canada today, if we define forestry as a science whose object is to 

 perpetuate on a given area the productiveness of certain commercially 

 valuable trees. 



We are wont to put the blame for this state of aft'airs upon an in- 

 different public and upon our legislators, especially the politicians. 

 They are undoubtedly contributing factors, but I think we are chiefly 

 to blame ourselves. We think we have solved the problem when we 

 have placed the blame on another's shoulders, and thereby we exhibit 

 the same psychological characteristics as most investigating commit- 

 tees — which I fear is not rating ourselves highly. As a bodv of for- 

 esters we have been too complacent, too self-satisfied. As my gray 

 hairs increase, as my experience with men extends, I meditate more 

 and more upon the peculiarities of that pulpy mass of grav matter 

 which we call the mind. I have concluded that it is good, it is human, 

 to be conservative ; but it is always bad and sometimes inhuman to be 

 too conservative. This habit of mind if long continued brings us in- 

 evitably to the point where we worship the T-A, T-A. This means 

 Things As They Arc. We ascribe to Things certain qualities and cer- 

 tain powers which they possess only because and as long as we believe 



