11 



and it has been heavy timber squared for the English market, you will 

 find in great masses, hewn off, thrown away and rotting, as much clear 

 timber as, sold at Toronto prices, would go far towards the whole sum 

 the lumberman will ever get for the log. The piles of debris are every- 

 where, and form a most inflammable portion of the touchwood of a 

 forest. Then before the strong oxen could drag the great log to the river 

 down which it had to be floated an avenue of smaller trees had sometimes 

 to be cleared from the way, and these likewise piled in desicating heaps, 

 their skeleton branches protruding among the green undergrowth, like 

 the ghastly relics of mortality on a forgotten battlefield, cumber the 

 forest floor." 



You will find many places where trees are choking one another for 

 want of air and light, until in lapse of years some stronger one shall 

 tower above his fellows. You will find places where hurricanes have cut 

 their way through the forest, and the trees lie for miles, as the ranks 

 mown down by the mitrailleuse. You will pass the solitary bush road, 

 the trees which once grew therein chopped right and left into the forest 

 by the makers of the track, where they lie in dry heaps for miles on miles 

 forming as pretty a fire-track as one could wish to see. And everywhere 

 you will find millions of young trees giving full promise, if spared axe 

 and fire, of becoming trees as sturdy as any the lumberman has carried 

 away, but nevertheless, the impression produced on you by the whole 

 pilgrimage will be that, if no preventive measures be used, the fire which 

 has taken so much already will sooner or later take the rest When one 

 compares the state of our forests with that of those in some parts of 

 Europe, and thinks of the long avenues of fire-breaks, the forest-rangers 

 on the watch, the careful management, the incessant thinning and 

 replanting, the long succession of goodly trees yearly ready for the axe, 

 and the certainty, with equal care, of such a succession for all time to 

 come, one is apt to think it full time that some such system were intro- 

 duced here. (PUpps 1 Report). 



FOREST EXISTING IN ONTARIO COUNTIES. 

 (From Agricultural Commission.) 



Prescott and Russell. About forty-seven and a half per cent, of the entire 

 area is under timber, consisting of hemlock, cedar, tamarac, beech, birch, 

 elm, basswood, ash, balsam, pine, spruce, walnut, butternut, whitewood, 

 dogwood, soft maple, and red and black cherry ; used principally for 

 lumber, fencing, firewood, railway ties and saw logs. 



Glengarry, Stormont, and Dundas. Probably about thirty per cent of 

 tne entire area of these countries is still timbered with hard and soft 

 maple, beech, birch, ash, tamarac, elm, basswood, hemlock, spruce, bal- 

 sam, and some pine ; used for fuel, lumber, railway ties, telegraph posts 

 and shingles. 



Carleton. About 287,000 acres of land in this county are still uncleared. 



