News and Notes 283 



A lively forest club is a feature of the forestry development 

 in British Columbia. There are not only the members of the 

 provincial and Dominion Forestry Branches, but private foresters 

 in the Province, who meet from time to time to discuss matters 

 of local interest, printing and distributing the papers of more 

 general interest presented. Mr. W. J. VanDusen of the Forest 

 Branch in Victoria is Secretary. We are in receipt of a paper 

 on "Dominion Forest Work in British Columbia" by District 

 Inspector D. Roy Cameron, and one on "Agricultural Land" by 

 Dr. Whit ford, who is engaged by the Commission of Conserva- 

 tion in classifying and ascertaining the timber resources of British 

 Columbia. This area, on the basis of data so far at hand, is 

 estimated at somewhere near 15 per cent of the total area, 23 

 million acres in the southern part of the Province. What con- 

 stitutes agricultural land is discussed at length and clearly 

 shows that, while constituents of fertility must be present, 

 there are other elements that go to make the possibility of suc- 

 cessful farming, namely, the human element, the amount of 

 capital, the transportation and the climatic element. 



In a talk given before the club by Mr, Austin Cary, he recalled 

 the beginnings of his forestry work some twenty odd years ago. 

 We quote his words in full, which give an interesting insight 

 into the pioneering work that had to be done at that time. 



"Forestry in the United States was then represented by Dr. 

 Fernow, as head of a division in the Department of Agriculture, 

 about half-a-dozen men connected with his office, and a few 

 writers and thinkers, mainly botanists by profession, in different 

 parts of the country. My own start was made through Dr. Fer- 

 now, who gave me a job to get volume and growth measurements 

 on pine and spruce timber, which work occupied me a large part 

 of three winters, and took me into the woods of Maine, New 

 Hampshire, Michigan and Wisconsin. This sort of work is 

 familiar enough to you, but was entirely new and strange to 

 most people whom I met in its prosecution. They frequently 

 could not believe that there was such a thing as systematic, scien- 

 tific study of forest growth, and workmen and camp foremen 

 frequently would not believe my errand when I told them. Some- 

 times they thought I was a game warden or detective. I never 

 shall forget an incident that happened in the winter of 1893-4 

 in northern New Hampshire. I was measuring trees and count- 

 ing rings one very cold day on the west side of Mount Washing- 



