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24 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. {[VoL. VIII. 
From a commercial standpoint, the trees are the most important. 
They are not only becoming increasingly valuable for cabinet ware, for 
construction purposes, and for export, but form a large source of revenue 
to Ontario, Quebec and other Provincial Governments. A knowledge 
of the range northward of trees is thus presently very important in con- 
nection with the construction and future traffic of the proposed Grand 
Trunk Pacific Railway. Certain trees are fair indicators of soil and 
climate, and are also essential to the settler, and important elements in 
the railways’ traffic. The danger to be avoided is the location of the 
transcontinental route too far north where the more useful trees either 
do not grow or are at the northern limit of their growth. Lumber is 
very important to all of our Canadian railways as an item of traffic, whilst 
on the other hand, it enters largely into the necessary requirements of 
the settlers in construction of houses and bridges and the very many 
needs generally of farm life, and for these latter purposes it must be found 
near the line of railway if it is to be cheap. The projected route for the 
Government section would be about 300 miles north of Toronto and 200 
miles north of Ottawa, but, long before these points have been reached, 
the red and sugar maple, all of the oaks, butternut, basswood, beech, ash, 
hemlock and many other valuable trees have ceased to grow, the elm is 
rarely met with, whilst the white and red pine have just found their 
most northerly limit and are very scarce. The prevailing forest includes 
chiefly black and white spruce, balsam-poplar, aspen, paper birch and 
Banksian pine, none of which have the value of white and red pine for 
structural purposes. For pulpwood, the demand for them and the 
direct revenue they will bring in must, in the future, be relatively small 
when compared with the vast available supply of these woods in this 
northerly country. 
Looking at the forests alone, we can divide them readily into five 
areas, each of which may be appropriately named after the most pre- 
vailing and important tree within it, as follows:—Firstly, the Walnut 
Area which occupies the narrow south-west peninsula of Ontario bounded 
by Lakes Ontario, Erie and St. Clair, and has within it sixty-eight out 
of the seventy-six trees which are found in Ontario, including such trees 
as the Black Walnut, Tulip Tree, the Magnolia, the Sassafras, the Chest- 
nut, Dogwood, Buttonwood and others; secondly, the Maple and Beech 
Area which occupies the country lying between Lakes Ontario and Huron, 
thence eastward between the St. Lawrence and the Ottawa Rivers to 
New Hampshire, and has within it about fifty-six different species of 
trees, including the Ash, Butternut, the White and Red Oak, Hickories 
and many others; thirdly, the White Pine Area occupying the country 
lying between Nova Scotia and Newfoundland on the one hand and the 
Winnipeg River and the Lake-of-the-Woods on the other, the northern 
