14 PROTECTION OF PLANTS, 1921-22 



FOREST PATHOLOGY IN RELATION TO FOREST CONSERVATION 

 By Dr. J. H. Faull, Toronto, Univ. 



The forests of Canada have been a notable heritage, a wide-extended 

 covering of magnificent trees of many kinds; they have provided a shelter 

 for game and far-bearing animals, a protection for the watersheds, pla3'groimds 

 for the people, an unending storehouse of wealth and a continuous and unmeas- 

 urable source of spiritual power. For the main part thej'- have remained 

 in the ownership of the people, the state; thus it is that their conservation is 

 of direct interest to and a responsibility of every citizen of the country. 



Three agencies have been very active in destroying this heritage — waste, 

 fire, and disease, and with such effect that there is a very real danger of an 



Fig. 1. — -Scene in a Quebec pulpwood forest after harvesting. This area has been severely 

 damaged by the spruce budworm and the timber-destroying fungi that follow the spruce 

 budworm. — ^(Photograph by courtesy of O. Schieibeck.) 



asset being converted into a liability. Conservationists have been prophesying 

 for many years the approaching exhaustion of our forests. There has been 

 a tendency to call their assertions into question, or at best to accept them with 

 .a mental reservation; the conditions we now face are a complete vindication 

 of their gravest warnings. We are all too familiar with endless barren wastes 

 once clothed with forests and with the increasing remoteness of profitable 

 timber; but few even yet realize that over vast stretches the pines have become 

 almost literally, certainly practically extinct, that the spruces are rapidly 



