Canadian Forestry Journal, October, 1919 



417 



Forest Service reports tell of a successful trial Peculiar interest attaches to the movement 



patrol undertaken recently under test con- for conservation as affecting North Carolina, 



ditions. No difficulty was experienced in detect- Tennessee and Kentucky, because of the poten- 



ing fires in heavy timber at elevations of from tialities involved. — Electrical Experimenter. 

 6,000 to 10,000 feet. 



DRINKING WATER AND TREE PLANTING 



(A Letter in the Globe, Toronto.) 



In a recent paper you very wisely advocate the 

 reforesting of our lands which have been de- 

 nuded of trees, by communities undertaking the 

 work, as in Germany. Let me give you one in- 

 stance of what was done by a private land- 

 owner in North Wales. After the demobiliza- 

 tion of the British army which succeeded the 

 battle of Waterloo, Sir Robert Vaughan of Nar- 

 man Dalgetty, put the discharged soldiers of 

 his regiment to plant a steep hillside with larch. 

 This great wood, which lay near the popular 

 watering place of Barmouth, was well known till 

 thirty years ago by travellers on the Cambian 

 Railway. In the centre of it he had planted 

 the date of the planting, 1818, in dark figures, 

 so that it was visible for miles. His descendant 

 felled the trees about 1890 and reape dan ab- 

 undant harvest. One of the frequent travellers 

 on that line was Mr. D. Lloyd George, and he 

 must have had the forest in mind when he ob- 

 tained from the British Parliament a grant for 

 replanting of waste lands some years ago. 



Now there is a magnificent opportunity to 

 employ our discharge dsoldiers in the same 

 way, which will serve two purposes. The county 

 of Grey has a magnificent terrace of a million 

 acres about seventeen hundred feet above the 

 sea. It IS the source of all the great rivers of 

 Western Ontario. The snows are driven in 

 from Lake Huron and in recent years lay to a 

 depth of twenty feet in the magnificent forests 

 of elm, tamarac, pine, maple, etc., which cov- 

 ered those lands fifty years ago. In the ad- 

 joining county, near Maple Valley, I remember 

 magnificent maple trees of fifty feet and up- 

 wards in height, which still remained twenty- 

 five years since as relics of the forest primeval. 

 Now the forest is all gone, the rivers are drying 

 up and the soil is being washed away, because 

 the snows are swept over the summit, and sud- 

 denly melted in disastrous floods, instead of 

 being retained long enough to fill that mag- 

 nificent natural reservoir, the Artemsia gravel 

 bed, which starts in the centre of Grey county 

 and sends one spur down to Brantford. This 



gravel bed is the chief source of the Grand 

 River, and supplies all its feeders and springs 

 with water all through our torrid summer, but 

 it is being robbed at the source of the pure 

 water which should save us from our scourge 

 of periodic deadly epidemics due to our sew- 

 age-tainted supplies of river water served out 

 to the cities of the Grand River Valley by the 

 consent of the Provincial Health Board. 



Now the Province of Ontario is the commun- 

 ity which should tackle the job of replanting 

 the forests of County Grey at once by making 

 a provincial park on the Blue Mountains, at the 

 source of the Grand, the Mad River, the Beaver, 

 the Sydenham, the Saugeen and the Rocky 

 Saugeen. The Thames is also fed from the same 

 source. 



Give the returner soldiers work by planting 

 an enduring monument to our great victory, 

 like Sir Robert Vaughan did in Wales a century 

 ago. 



As an illustration of what mghit be done we 

 have in Brantford a magnificent elm planted on 

 his homestead about 1830 by our pioneer, Mr. 

 John A. Wilkes. It is 10 feet 6 inches in girth 

 four feet from the ground, and fifty feet high. 

 It runs twenty feet up without a limb. Near 

 there, on the site of the old Congregational 

 church, is a maple which exceeds 9 feet in 

 girth, probably planted by the same gentleman 

 after the church was built in 1836. If replant- 

 ing were to become the fashion tree lovers like 

 Mr. Wilkes would repair the slaughter of the last 

 century by covering Ontario with woods and 

 forests wherever waste lands, corners and steep 

 hill-sides cry out for them. We of this gen- 

 eration have no right to foul rivers and streams 

 with sewage or to leave deserts and swamps to 

 our children to breed malaria as the Turks have 

 blighted Mesopotamia and other lands, but we 

 are doing just that like careless spendthrifts or 

 decadent nations in the east. 



John Robertson. 



Brantford, Ont. 



