Forest Investigations in Canada 507 



subjects, and who are certainly parties at interest in the case, 

 must align themselves on the side of those social and political 

 movements which are essential for the adoption of forestry as an 

 indigenous practised profession instead of an exotic curiosity, or 

 else must be indifferent to the success of their own profession. 

 Furthermore, a pioneering profession, such as forestry is with 

 us, cannot be content with a slow development, but must have a 

 vigorous aggressive policy and growth, until it becomes an estab- 

 lished national fixture. We have had some recent striking illustra- 

 tions of what happens to an invading army that loses the initia- 

 tive. The same thing can just as well happen to a new profession 

 that gets into a self-satisfied rut. Possibly in a hundred years 

 or so our professional successors may be able to regard their 

 profession as securely established if we do our part now. Cer- 

 tainly the present generation of foresters, either in Canada or 

 the United States, cannot for a moment lose the initiative without 

 risk to the entire success of the practice and profession of for- 

 estry. This statement is based on the premise that professional 

 foresters cannot reasonably continue to exist except under con- 

 ditions that permit the actual employment of those special quali- 

 fications which they possess ; that is, their technical training, and 

 that wherever the actual practice of forestry remains as widely 

 divorced from the theory of forestry as it is with us at present, 

 the inevitable result must be the replacement of the technical 

 forester by the non-technical administrator, and, I believe, 

 rightly so. 



The plans of the Forestry Branch for undertaking forest inves- 

 tigations are based on the assumption that by forestry we mean 

 more than merely fire protection and the accounting for revenue, 

 but that intensive management of forest properties, both state and 

 private, should be dependent upon economic feasibility only, and 

 that social or political conditions antagonistic to such practice 

 are detrimental to the best interests of the State. The Branch 

 believes that there are portions of Canada where economic condi- 

 tions warrant a much more technical administration of state- 

 owned timberlands than is now being given them, and in antici- 

 pation of future progress in these regions it aims to secure the 

 necessary information upon which such technical management 

 may be based. While to a considerable extent the investigative 

 work must at first be largely in connection with Dominion forest 



