26 PPOTECTION OF PLANTS, 1921-22 



likely they talk that way because of the emolient properties of the idea. As a 

 matter of fact, there are forests and forests; there are trees and trees. It does 

 not follow that an area covered with forests is commercially valuable because 

 of their presence, or that one tree is as good as another for the various purposes 

 of the market. In the neighborhood of 70 different kinds of trees have been 

 used in this country in the wood and timber trade, but a very few species 

 contribute the greater portion of the output. About four billion feet of 

 lumber are cut in Canada every year. Their value as rough liimber is approx- 

 imately -1122,000,000. When time, labor and thought have been expended 

 upon them they become worth around $250,000,000. Thus our forests, in 

 terms of the manufactured lumber products, increase our national wealth a 

 quarter of a billion dollars each year. Over two-thirds of the above values 

 are contributed by six different kinds of trees. The comparatively few kinds 

 of trees in our forests that are utilized in large quantities are still more strik- 

 ingly shown in the case of the pulpwood. Of this material around four million 

 cords are cut each year, valued in the rough at $45,000,000, and from which 

 pulp and paper products are produced to the value of over $200,000,000. 

 More than 90 per cent of these values is furnished b}' the wood of foui^ kinds 

 of trees. 



These few trees enter so largely into the products of the forest not because 

 they are plentiful and accessible, but because the}' meet the market require- 

 ments better than any others. Because of certain inherent mechanical and 

 physical properties, no Canadian wood, for example, is so well adapted to such 

 a variety of uses as that of the white pine. The commercial supply of this 

 species is fast disappearing. Owing to this fact, we are alreadj^ using poorer 

 woods as substitutes — with little or no difference in price. And again, no 

 wood fibre is so well adapted for paper making as that of spruce. Notwith- 

 standing all that has been said and done with regard to employing various 

 vegetable fibres as substitutes for woodpulp, little has been accomplished or 

 probabl}^ ever will be accomplished because of the quality, adaptibility and 

 cheapness of production of wood fibre and among wood fibres those of spruce 

 stand supreme as the result of certain inherent characteristics. When the 

 suppl}' of spruce is gone we shall be compelled to use poorer — but not cheaper — 

 grades of paper. 



Now we will turn to our forested areas from the standpoint of the commer- 

 cially valuable trees. In the first place, of the 3.5 million square miles of land 

 area in Canada, 1.6 million square miles, over 40 per cent, are too cold or too 

 high or too dry to produce trees of sufficient size to interest lumbermen. 

 Around 100,000 square miles should be deducted for agricultural lands outside 

 the grasslands of the West, they having been included in the above. Even 

 with these deductions, we have enormous areas covered bj^ forests, some 

 1,900,000 square miles (over a billion acres), and again, having their utilization 

 value in mind, let us ask: What kind of forests; what kind of trees? On at 

 least 500,000 square miles climatic conditions are such as to produce only trees 



