126 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICUI.TURAL SOCIETY. 



the doctrine. I have in my Ufetime seen the introduction 

 of too many new woods, and the opening up of too many new 

 sources of supply, ever to be led away by such a belief. 



Let us take a few instances : — The famous yellow pine of 

 Canada, grown on the banks of the Ottawa River, without 

 which, fifty years ago, it was thought impossible properly to 

 finish a good dwelling-house, has been cut out, or almost cut 

 out, but to take its place we have got in rich abundance 

 the poplar of the Southern States, known here as Canary 

 pine, the Kauri pine from New Zealand, and the Douglas fir 

 from British Columbia, and now there is being placed on 

 the market beautiful yellow pine from Vladivostock. The 

 strong red fir for joisting timber which at one time came from 

 Dantzic or Memel or Stettin, although still obtainable, has 

 been ousted by the handsome long-leafed pitch pine from 

 Florida or Louisiana or Texas, of greater length, better 

 dimensions, and much freer from sapwood. 



But perhaps there is no better example than mahogany. 

 That wood in varying quality, until about thirty years ago, 

 came entirely from the West Indies, from Cuba, San Domingo, 

 Honduras, and Mexico. Prophets were not awanting then as 

 now who predicted tlie early extinction of this beautiful timber, 

 which, as a tree, is to the forest what the rose is to the garden. 

 The world was then ignorant that in tropical West Africa 

 there were vast forests of mahogany of nobler dimensions and 

 of as fine quality as any that ever grew in the Indies — forests 

 that even yet, after thirty years of exploitation, have only 

 been nibbled at. The figure is so rich in some of these 

 African logs, and their value for veneer cutting so great, 

 that only last month, at a Liverpool auction, three logs were 

 sold that realised in all ^^2400 ; the largest log of the parcel, 

 28 feet 6 inches by 37 inches, selling at 9s. lod. per superficial 

 foot I inch thick and fetching ;^ioi3. There is already a 

 Forest Department organised at Lagos, Southern Nigeria, where 

 the forests are being conserved and new plantations opened 

 at the rate of about 250,000 plants per annum, and this is 

 only one little spot in the tropical district of that vast continent. 

 Even in British East Africa, at one time thought to be com- 

 paratively sterile, there have been surveyed over 2,000,000 acres 

 of saleable forest. 



Sixty years ago Norway supplied almost all the roofing 



