LVI THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



the French Alps have been devastated in this way and the population 

 forced to leave, their farms having entirely disappeared. 



Widespread devastation from this cause is also seen in China, 

 where the wood cutters, in search of fuel for the dense population of 

 that teeming land, in past ages completely stripped the forest cover 

 from the hill slopes over great areas which are now deserts. 



This destructive process is going forward very rapidly in the 

 southern Appalachian region of the United States. The Secretary of 

 Agriculture of the United States has stated that in 1901 the damage 

 wrought in this region from this cause amounted to $18,000,000, 

 and Governor Glen in his address to the White House Conference in 

 1908 stated that the loss year in and year out might be estimated at 

 from seven to eight million dollars. 



Prof. Shaler says that a field lying at an angle of twenty degrees 

 can be totally destroyed in a hundred plowings, and he estimates that 

 in Kentucky, where cultivation is hardly more than a century old, 

 one tenth of the arable soil has been destroyed and that a considerable 

 portion of this cannot be restored in any way. This danger is espe- 

 cially threatening on the steep mountain slopes in British Columbia, 

 where the soil, if stripped of its forest cover by the axe or by fire, 

 will be exposed to the same destruction as has been experienced 

 elsewhere. 



Fortunately an interest in the preservation of our forests is being 

 awakened in Canada and certain steps are being taken toward this 

 end. 



One of the most widespread causes of destruction has been forest 

 fires. The railroads have been a very active agency in starting 

 such fires. The Railway Commission have made a regulation govern- 

 ing all the roads under their control to the effect that the roads are 

 responsible for any forest fires started by their trains in the districts 

 through which they run and that any fire which has started or is found 

 burning within 300 feet of their tracks will be considered as having 

 been originated by their trains. This has led to a very careful patrol 

 of the railway lines, especially where these run through forest lands, 

 as for instance in Alberta and British Columbia. The locomotives 

 running over some 587 miles of the railways on the Canadian Pacific 

 Railway in British Columbia have been equipped to burn oil instead 

 of coal, which greatly reduces the danger of starting fires in the ad- 

 acent forests. All the railways have made provision by appointing 

 special officers to carry out the orders of the Canadian Board of Rail- 

 way Commissioners and to co-operate with the officers of that body 

 and of the federal and provincial forest departments. 



