PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. I 



The United Kingdom is the world's greatest importer of 

 timber; we take something like £18,000,000 worth annually, 

 and the figure is rapidly rising. From four of the countries that 

 supply us we obtain produce to the value of £14,000,000, viz.: — 

 from Sweden, £4,000,000; from Russia, £4,000,000; from 

 Canada, £3,500,000 ; and from the United States, £2,500,000. 

 Let us consider for a moment the position in Canada and the 

 United States, which together provide us with one-third of our 

 annual requirements. 



As regards the former country, we have copious information in 

 Johnson's "Report on the Forest Wealth of Canada," 1895. The 

 forests are estimated to cover an area of 1,250,000 square miles, 

 or about forty-two times the area of Scotland with all its islands. 

 This is ample enough to grow wood for home consumption, as well 

 as to supply the United State3 and the British Isles, and one 

 might almost add, the world at large. But a considerable pro- 

 portion of this vast area does not now contain marketable 

 timber, and the remainder is not under conditions which will 

 enable it to yield a permanent supply. There are already signs 

 of exhaustion visible in the reduced size of the logs we receive as 

 compared with those sent over a score or so of years ago. The 

 White (Weymouth) pine of marketable size will have disappeared 

 before many years have elapsed, while the young natural crops 

 are being destroyed by fire ; and the position of the spruce and 

 the Douglas fir is not much better. 



Fire is the great destroying agent, and there can be no doubt 

 that although the uncontrolled rapacity of the lumberman is 

 answerable for a good deal, fire consumes, or irretrievably damages, 

 a vastly greater share of the forest wealth of the Dominion. Settlers 

 in the " back woods " are responsible for perhaps the greater part 

 of the destruction by fire. They get grants of forest land, covered 

 with huge trees, which, so long as they stand or lie on the ground, 

 form an effectual impediment to its cultivation. They must clear 

 the ground ; and to cut down and drag away timber for which 

 there is no market is a practical impossibility for them. But the 

 highly resinous pines and firs quickly succumb to the fierce flames 

 which soon follow the kindling of a fire ; and in this way the 

 settler is able, without the expenditure of time and superhuman 

 labour, to rid himself of a crop of magnificent timber, which 

 represents to him nothing but an otherwise immovable impedi- 

 ment to the development of the " claim " for the support of himself 



