In addition to the exports, the quantity of timber used in the Dominion 

 is about two-fifths of the whole. The amount of capital invested in. 

 timber lands and saw mill property is at least $35,000,000, the value of 

 the output is $38,000,000, and the amount annually invested in working 

 capital is $20,000,000. Fifty per cent of the whole products of the forest 

 represents labour, and thirty-five per cent, for stumpage, ground rents, 

 interest on mill property, cost of limits and working capital. There are 

 employed in producing this timber in the woods during the winter about 

 13,000 men, during the summer in the mills about 15,000, and over 5,000 

 are employed in loading and manning the craft that convey it to market. 

 These 83,000 men, the greater proportion of whom have families, repre- 

 sent a large population. Looking at the indirect benefits derived from 

 this industry, such as the construction and repair of mills, machinery, 

 barges and steamboats, and the benefit derived from the number of ships 

 which take away our timber and timber products, it is hard to over- 

 estimate its importance. Quebec for the past ten years has loaded on an 

 average 620 vessels, representing 800 tons each, and carrying about four hun- 

 dred million feet of lumber and timber, whilst as much more was shipped 

 in other ports of the Dominion on seagoing craft. Montreal exported in 

 1882, by steamships principally, eighty-eight million feet of three inch 

 deals to Europe, and twenty-two million feet of boards and planks to- 

 South America. The lumbermen, moreover, create a home demand for 

 farm products, generally at better prices than could be obtained else- 

 where. To give an idea of the large consumption of agricultural produce 

 in this business, the following statement of the requirements of one large 

 firm in the Ottawa district for one season answers for all others in its 

 general outline. This firm consumes 750 tons of hay, 25,000 bushels of 

 oats, 5,000 bushels of turnips, 6,000 bushels of potatoes, 1,000 barrels of 

 pork, 9,000 barrels of flour, 2,000 barrels of oatmeal in the woods alone, 

 or in round figures 2,400 tons of agricultural produce are required by 

 this one firm. 



Sawn lumber is, to a great extent, taking the place of square timber for 

 exportation, a step in the right direction, as it saves much waste in the 

 wood, as well as costly freight in nearly worthless wood contained in the 

 centre of nearly every piece of square timber, as well as keeping a large 

 amount of labour in the country, such as sawing, piling, &c. Square 

 timber must be selected with the greatest care, nearly perfectly straight, 

 and entirely free from knots, shakes or any other blemish. It must be 

 hewn perfectly square, and must carry the same thickness throughout, a 

 ^very slight taper only being allowable ; it must bo thirty feet in length, 

 and should square at least fifteen inches. The loss in its manufacture is 

 very great, especially when of large growth and squaring eighteen inches 

 or over. Splendid pieces of timber have been not unfrequontly left on 

 the ground because they were not square evenly throughout. With the 

 exhaustion of our larger timber attention will have to be paid to trees of 

 a smaller growth, which have hitherto been passed over by the lumber- 

 map as beneath his notice. In the forests of Europe trees of this piae 



