VARIATION IN NORTHERN FOREST 871 



can be learned in the forest of the settled portions of Quebec because 

 the cutting is older. 



A forest condition perhaps unknown to the majority exists along 

 the coast of the Bay of Fundy, where a high precipitation and humid- 

 ity has created a practically pure spruce and spruce-balsam forest. 

 The balsam does not extend 'down to the shore for the last mile 

 or mile and a half, leaving a pure stand of spruce on the slope. In 

 spite of the logging that has gone on here for over 30 years, 

 there is still a good stand, except on the recent cutting and the few 

 places where fire has entered. Even the burns are returning to good 

 stands, and the open cleared fields about St. Martins are coming in 

 heavily to red spruce. A close study of this area will throw some 

 light on the optimum conditions for the regeneration of spruce and fir. 



Burned areas deserve more careful consideration since the acreage 

 is now large and promises to be larger. In this respect the forests of 

 western Ontario have the advantage that the fire types of jack pine, 

 paper birch, and aspen promise to develop into timber crops that will 

 be useful. It has been developed by Robertson ^ that the Miramichi 

 burn has come back to a stand of valuable softwood, similar to the 

 original, that it is even-aged though not even-sized, and that the age 

 is nearly equal to that of the burn. 



These observations have been offered to support the point taken 

 before that a study of the existing conditions in the northern soft- 

 wood forest will show quite accurately the range of possibility in re- 

 generating a given tract, and a correlation of studies made, together 

 witli climatic data available, will make it possible to define the silvical 

 behavior of the present pulp species sufficiently accurately for our pres- 

 ent needs. In this way a beginning of regulation can be made. 



^ W. N. Robertson. Unpublished report on Bathurst Experimental plot, under 

 direction of Commission of Conservation of Canada. 



