TWELFTH ORDINARY MEETING. _ he 111 
rainfall, and to have become fertile again. (Mr. Phipps gave many 
instances from the history of different lands—Spain, France, Germany, 
Palestine, India, and others bearing on this point.) The operations 
of nature, he said, are chiefly hidden from our view. We see the tree 
grow and the field yield its increase, but the actual accretion, particle 
by particle, so that the buds sprang forth, the leaves appeared, the 
blossom and the fruit followed in due season, is not within our sight. 
But we know that the sun gave its warming beams ; that the moisture 
continually rose from the earth at its call, and fell again in rain, and 
rose and fell again. And we know that when alternate heat has 
dried the land, and alternate shower has given its waters, till trunk 
and branches drip, and the roadside ditch is a flowing river, that then 
leaf and bud and blossom glow and swell with a newer beauty, that 
the great leaves of the cornfield broaden with a more vivid green, 
that the waving wheat receives growing impetus and overtops the 
rustic fence, and every embowering grove sends out a fresher’ frag- 
rance upon the summer, air. It is the enriching influence of the 
circulation of heat and moisture—it is with this we interfere when 
we deforest the land. In Ontario, in many parts, we have cleared 
all but ten per cent, and even this small amount is not remaining. 
How to preserve and increase it is the chief question for Ontario 
to-day, for on that alone depends whether her farms shall remain 
fertile or become barren. In the rest of the address, which was en- 
tirely impromptu, and of which this report is necessarily but a 
synopsis, Mr. Phipps narrated many interesting facts concerning the 
influence of deforesting on agriculture in Ontario, and stated. that, 
in the older settled parts, there were but three ways of proceeding. 
By windbreak, by plantation, and by preserving whatever portions 
of forest yet stood, by excluding cattle, which last’ was the main 
point. He gave the methods of proceeding in each case, and men- 
tioned the trees suitable for each. He also spoke of the large pine 
forests in the interior, the necessity of their preservation from fire, 
described the burnt lands he had lately seen near the Ottawa, where 
for a length of seventy miles, and a breath of twenty, in one place 
alone, was nothing but dead trees, useless now, a pine forest worth 
many millions a few years back, and mentioned. that. Quebec was 
reserving great areas for forest alone, discouraging settlement where- 
ever the pine forest should be preserved. He concluded by saying 
that it was much more than a Provincial, it was more than a national, 
3 
