THE FORESTS OF CANADA. 



If Canada has been highly distinguished in any respect by the bounty 

 of nature, it is in the number and variety of its trees. An English 

 traveller, writing on this subject, said : " I was never tired of the forest 

 scenery of America, the endless diversity of its foliage always preventing 

 it from being monotonous." A stranger gazing for the first time on the 

 unbroken forest is peculiarly struck with admiration at the surprising 

 and to him novel scenery it presents, a scenery peculiarly its own. A 

 wide expanse of unknown extent, canopied above by the dark mass of 

 spreading foliage ; countless columns of trunks, which, far as the eye 

 can reach, mile after mile, rise tall and erect, supporting that living roof, 

 and long-drawn vistas through which the eye seeks in vain to pene- 

 trate the depths of the forest solitude; such is the scene which meets 

 the eye. But it is when the first frost has touched the trees, and the 

 change of colour in the leaves has set in, that the forests put on their 

 greatest beauty. Each kind has its own hue above all the maple and 

 every hue is lovely. The leaf of the maple, the first to colour, remains 

 throughout the most beautiful in its golden yellow and crimson. Lofty 

 trees and humble undergrowth, and climbing creepers, all alike deck the 

 landscape with every tint that can be borrowed from the light, till the 

 whole looks like the scenery of a fairy tale, and presents a spectacle 

 unknown to the residents of the Old AVorld. McGregor, in his work on 

 British America, speaking of the forests, says : " Two or three frosty 

 nights in the decline of autumn transform the boundless verdure of a 

 whole empire into every possible tint of brilliant scarlet, rich violet, 

 every shade of brown, vivid crimson, and glittering yellow. The stern, 

 inexorable fir tribes alone maintain their eternal sombre green ; all 

 others, in mountains or in valleys, burst into the most glorious vegetable 

 beauty, and exhibit the most splendid and most enchanting panorama 

 on earth." 



Dr. Hough, in his Forestry report to Congress in 1877, says : " The 

 reciprocal influences that operate between woodlands and climate appear 

 to indicate a close relation between them. It is observed that certain 

 consequences follow the clearing off of forests, such as the diminution of 

 rivers and the drying up of streams and springs ; other effects scarcely 

 less certain are seen in the occurrence of destructive floods and of 

 unseasonable and prolonged droughts, with other vicissitudes of climate 



