Forest Investigations in Canada 509 



25 per cent can be considered of agricultural value, while only a 

 very small percentage of this is at present cultivated, and prob- 

 ably several generations will pass before it is largely brought 

 into use. It is not the low percentage of cultivatable land area 

 that is most important, however, for this is still very considerable 

 in actual area, but rather the geographical distribution of the 

 possible agricultural land that constitutes the more important 

 problem, and involves the profession of forestry in a great 

 national question. As you all know, the agricultural portions of 

 the country are roughly seven in number, separated from each 

 other by non-agricultural areas of greater or less extent and 

 strung along 3500 miles of longitude very much like beads on a 

 string. We have, first. Nova Scotia and the lower coast valleys 

 of New Brunswick, highly developed ; then the rough forested 

 region lying between eastern New Brunswick and the St. Law- 

 rence ; then the second agricultural area in the St. Lawrence and 

 the Ottawa valleys, followed by a narrow belt of forested Lauren- 

 tian country running northwestward ifrom Kingston toward 

 North Bay. The third and at present most important area of 

 developed land is the Niagara peninsula, but this is separated 

 from the fourth area, the Prairies, by 1000 miles of the most 

 absolute forest soil in America. The agricultural area of the 

 Prairie provinces is, of course, several times greater than all the 

 rest combined. West of it lies the Rockies, 270 miles wide before 

 Sicamous and the Interior plateau is reached ; then a possibility 

 for scattered settlement over a hundred-mile width of the Dry 

 Belt, followed by the 150-mile mass of the Cascades, and 

 finally by the limited agricultural areas of the Coast. Except the 

 Prairies, all these agricultural areas are comparatively limited in 

 extent, and some, as those in British Columbia, are badly broken 

 by non-agricultural land, aflfording room for only a very scattered 

 settlement. All of them are, however, surrounded on all sides 

 except the south by forest areas across which their lines of com- 

 munication lead. There can be only one result of a geographic 

 situation such as this. Unless these non-agricultural lands are 

 made productive enough through forest growth to support a 

 continuous forest industry, and therefore a permanent popula- 

 tion, they will constitute a drag on the development of the entire 

 country by their passive resistance to transportation, communi- 

 cation, local government and all general public activities with. 



