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Canadian Forestry Journal. 



half is in forest, and for about eighty 

 years now it has been handled with 

 increasing care. It is one of the 

 few stretches of timber-land in Ca- 

 nada owned in fee simple, and the 

 family is thus one of the very few 

 on this continent who have handled 

 their forests in a rational way for 

 several generations v/ith the object 

 of securing a perpetual timber crop. 

 Sir Henri, as stated before, did much 

 of this. He not only looked to the 

 perpetuation of the native species 

 but made experiments with plant- 

 ations of trees not indigenous to the 

 soil. 



But for at least twenty years be- 

 fore Sir Henri's death the practical 

 oversight of these forests devolved 

 upon his son. The old manor house 

 has been for many years at Point 

 Platon, overlooking from a high cape 

 the broad St. Lawrence. While the 

 family were engaged in professional 

 work in the city of Quebec, it was 

 the custom to live at Point Platon 

 in summer and in the city of Quebec, 

 about forty miles distant, in the 

 winter. However, of late years, 

 owing to improved railway facilities 

 and ,by building another house, ' The 

 Hermitage', on the line of the Inter- 

 colonial railway, some distance away 

 from the river, Mr. de Lotbiniere 

 A\'as able to live all the year around 

 on the estate. Here he carried on 

 and extended the work begun by his 

 father and "-randfather, and the 

 growing scarcity of timber made the 

 forests increasingly valuable. Dur- 

 ing the late winter he carried 

 through a series of tests to ascertain 

 the best method of disposing of de- 

 bris after lumbering, and came to 

 the conclusion that for a thick spruce 

 forest, such as he had to deal with, 

 the best method was of 'downing' 

 the tops, i.e. lopping them off and 

 spreading them around on the forest 

 floor. The result of his tests he em- 

 bodied in a paper which he read 

 at the Canadian Forestry Conven- 

 tion at Quebec, and which appears 

 in the Annual Report, just issued. 



He was a member of the Canadian 



Forestry Association from the begin- 

 ning. He was president in 1906, 

 the year in which Sir Wilfrid Lau- 

 rier convoked the Canadian Forestry 

 Convention in Ottawa — the first 

 convention to attract national atten- 

 tion — and on that occasion carried 

 out the duties of the office with tact 

 and dignity. He took the deepest 

 possible interest in all that con- 

 cerned the forest, and was President 

 of the Fish and Game Protective 

 Association for Quebec and district 

 at the time of his death. He was 

 delighted when his son voluntarily 

 decided to give up a course in medi- 

 cine and to study forestry under 

 Dr. Fernow. With the greatest pride 

 in his work and with a strong con- 

 viction of the necessity of progres- 

 sive forestry measures in Canada, he 

 always spoke with that modesty 

 which was characteristic of the 

 family. A few months ago, when 

 asked how the Lotbiniere forests had 

 suffered in respect of fire, he said 

 ' Speak it in a happy hour, we never 

 had a fire'. This did not mean simple 

 good luck, for he employed a consid- 

 erable number of fire rangers. The 

 Intercolonial Railway runs for 

 twelve miles through the property 

 and at a recent meeting he said that 

 his rangers had put out as many as 

 ten fires in a day on that stretch. 



It is interesting to note that from 

 the beginning this territory has had 

 a reputation as being covered with 

 good forests. The Seigniory is de- 

 scribed in 1815 by Lt.-Col. Joseph 

 Bouchette, Surveyor General of 

 Canada, in his Topographical Dic- 

 tionary of the British Dominions in 

 North America. It is a curious co- 

 incidence that this famous surveyor 

 general was the grandfather of Mr. 

 Errol Bouchette, LL.B., F.R.S.C., 

 for some time secretary to Sir Henri, 

 and now of the library of Parlia- 

 ment. Col. Bouchette states that on 

 the elevated ground of Lotbiniere 

 county the timber is beech, maple, 

 birch, hickory and pine, and, on the 

 low parts, spruce, basswood and fir. 

 Then, speaking of Lotbiniere seign- 



