^82 JOURNAL OF FORESTRY 



nate owner of a tract of virgin cedar and fir will, if only he can afford 

 to hold it for a few years, reap a rich reward. 



The relationship of timbered areas to future needs, their incentive 

 to tourist travel, the fact that they serve as water reservoirs, etc., make 

 the public vitally interested in seeing them continued. The refores- 

 tation of logged-off areas unfit for agriculture in the interior of Brit- 

 ish Columbia and portions of the Coast district, and protection of such 

 areas against fire, is proposed as the solution of the continued timber 

 supply problem. Depletion of our forests has not resulted from the 

 use of the forests but from their devastation, from our failure while 

 drawing upon our reservoirs of virgin timber to also use our timber 

 growing land. 



The reforestation will have to be undertaken in the main by the 

 Government. It is not practicable to enforce the practice of forestry 

 on private timberlands, for the growing of timber of sawlog size 

 is an operation too long in time and offering too low a rate of return 

 to attract private capital, always excepting pulp and paper companies 

 who can use timber long before it becomes sawlog size. (In this con- 

 nection, Pennsylvania planted nine million trees in 1919; 50 million 

 trees since 1900.) 



Very shortly we shall see a large increase in the number of these 

 plants, and it is to be hoped that Canadian and Empire capital will 

 be behind them. 



In conclusion let me say that it is vitally necessary that newspaper 

 publishers within the Empire should get together and acquire supplies 

 of timber against the time when they will be worrying not about the 

 price of timber but about the fact that they cannot get supplies at 

 any price. 



