204 



found of merchantable size and in fair abundance, is not so extensive but that another 

 few years of working the timber limits to the extent done in the past, must result in a 

 marked diminution in our exports of white pine. It is not with timber as with other 

 agricultural products. Reproduction cannot take place in a year or a decade. It must 

 be recollected that not until the pine is from seventy-five to one hundred years old is it of 

 good merchantable size for square timber, and that thus at least three-quarters of a cen- 

 tury would be required to make these timber limits what they were. And what has been 

 the experience in Maine and Michigan] The pine forests of both these States were 

 thought to be inexhaustible, and gave employment to many thousands of men. Bangor, 

 on the Penobscot, was one of the busiest spots in New England — so many mills lined the 

 river banks, and so many vessels frequented the port for lumber. Now the scene is 

 largely changed. The pine lumber manufactured there has fallen from 102,000,000 ft. 

 in 1856 to 63,000,000 ft. in 1866, and to 14,000,000 ft. in 1877, whilst the total pro- 

 duction of pine, spruce, and hemlock boards was not in 1877 one-half in amount what it 

 was in 1866. Again, in Michigan, the Saginaw Valley is being rapidly depleted, and to 

 supplement the supply to its numerous mills, whose capacity is 600,000,000 ft., logs have 

 to be brought from other large rivers long distances away. But most important of all is 

 the fact that the lun^ber journals of the Western States admit that in the three States of 

 Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota — the main sources of lumber supply in the West — 

 there does not, with the present demand, remain of standing pine timber sufficient for 

 ten years to come. 



Even greater destruction has resulted from forest fires, not only by reason of the im- 

 mense areas through which the fires sweep, but because both large and small trees are 

 alike destroyed. Another incidental but most important result arises from the fact that 

 after forest fires, the first growth always consists of poplar, birch and other trees, though 

 whether the pine, which is of slower growth, gradually in the course of long years, asserts 

 its position and overshadowing these, in turn replaces them, is a question which obser- 

 vation has not yet had time to settle. 



Tree planting has not yet impressed itself on the people of Ontario and Quebec as 

 an idea necessary to carry out. Hitherto, the ambition of most farmers appears to have 

 been to clear the land as soon as possible, and to be content if enough of wood suitable 

 for fuel and farm use is left. Whilst lumber was cheap and the supply appeared almost 

 inexhaustible, it would not appear necessary to most land owners to provide for the future. 

 Besides, men are selfish, and are disinclined to go to labour and expense in regard to what 

 does not promise immediate results, the advantage of which they will not themselves reap. 

 And yet if we revert to the condition of the Ontario peninsula, as it was fifty years ago, 

 abounding in .splendid walnut, whitewood, pine and oak trees, nearly all of which have 

 been cut down long since, and when we remember the greatly increased value which, 

 especially walnut, lumber now has, we cannot help seeing of what immense benefit to the 

 rising generation it would be had the trees, as cut down, been at once replaced by young 

 trees of the same species. Already many of these young trees would have been of fair 

 marketable size. The Maine Board of Agriculture in a memorial presented to the State 

 Legislature, very pointedly refers to the duties of individuals on this question. " Men 

 need to be taught," says the memorial, " that we have no moral right to follow blindly an 

 instinct that leads only to present personal advantage, regardless of widespread future 

 evils as a consequence ; that we are but tenants of this earth, not owners in perpetuity ; 

 and that we have no right to injure the inheritance of those who succeed us, but rather a 

 duty to leave it better for our having occupied it the allotted time. Men need to be 

 taught to plant trees and their children to plant and love them. Owners of good lands 

 in Maine or elsewhere will in the future learn that their bleak fields, if judiciously planted 

 with wood to the extent of 40 per cent, of area, will produce on the remaining 60 per 

 cent, more in all kinds of crops than the whole does now or can be made to do under any 

 other possible course of treatment. Lands well sheltered can and do produce winter 

 wheat in Maine as well as in New England or on the new lands at the West." In ac- 

 cordance with this memorial, the State Legislature provided for exemption for twenty- 

 years from taxation of all cleared lands on which forest trees had been successfully culti- 

 vated for three years, and maintained in a thriving condition thereafter. Nearly all of 



