THE FORESTRY EXHIBITION AT PARIS. 345 



M. Melard's important work concludes by pointing out that of 

 the countries which still supply timber, that supply is diminish- 

 ing in Austria-Hungary, the United States, and Russia, by the 

 increase of population and industrial development, and in Norway 

 by the exhaustion of the forests, so that only Sweden, Finland, 

 and Canada remain, and they will be unable alone to keep up the 

 supply. Neither in Sweden nor in Canada is a sufficient attempt 

 being made towards a proper management of the forests and 

 a proper husbanding of their resources, so that a wood famine 

 seems imminent, and M. Melard thinks that before fifty years 

 are out, that famine will make itself seriously felt. 1 The lesson 

 we have to take to heart, in the British Empire, is that in 

 Canada especially, in India and Australia, and even in Great 

 Britain, we must set to work seriously to consider the state of 

 affairs. As it is chiefly in the supply of the pine-timbers, which 

 we know as deals, that the famine will be felt, the first thing 

 to be done is for the Government of Canada to take the 

 matter up, reserve lands for forest, ascertain the value of the 

 forest capital stock, regulate its working by means of plans 

 destined to prevent cutting more than the interest on the capital, 

 ascertained to be the permanent annual yield, and provide for 

 proper regeneration. And in these islands also, forestry must no 

 longer be considered, as it only too often is now, a means of 

 keeping up woods as a home for game, or as a beautiful adjunct 

 to charming estates, but it musb be taken up seriously and 

 professionally. Above all, as it is timber of good quality and 

 size that will be required, we must give up those open-grown 

 woods, and that practice of over-thinning, which tend to produce 

 only small and knotty timber of low quality, and try to obtain 

 long sound boles, and wood that can compete with that produced 

 in the great forests of North America in size and quality. Again, 

 as it is timber fit for sawing that will be wanted more than fuel, 

 the present system of growing coppice-woods only for broad-leaf 

 trees must be exchanged for that of High Forest. 



On leaving the French Section and descending to the basement 

 on the level of the river quay, one passed first of all through part 

 of the Fisheries Exhibition, and then reached the long building 

 in which the national forestry collections were arranged. 



The first one arrived at was that of Russia, and the first 

 exhibit was an immense map showing the distribution of forest — 



1 M. Melard's conclusions are given in extemo at p. 384. — Ed. 



