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Canadian Forestry Journal, November, 1919 



PUTTING BACK A NEW FOREST 



By Ellxvood Wilson, Chief Forester of the Laurentide Co. 



Wood is the raw material entering most lar- 

 gely into the manufacture of newsprint paper. 

 Various substitutes have been tried, but so far 

 none have been very successful or seem at all 

 likely to supplant wood, and it is not likely that 

 anything else will ever do so to any large ex- 

 tent. The cellulose in wood, which is the fiber 

 from which the paper is made, is in such a 

 compact form htat it can be easily transported 

 and stored. If cornstalks, cotton stalks, or 

 grasses were to be used in the manufacture of 

 newsprint, the huge bulk to be transported, the 

 large areas which would have to be covered to 

 get sufficient material, and the difficulty of stor- 

 age, owing to the decomposition of the material 

 woul dbe very serious and costly obstacles. The 

 woods most commonly used are spruce and 

 balsam fir, both trees which grow in cold clim- 

 aftes or at moderately high altitudes, so that they 

 are often in the neighborhood of large rivers 

 with many falls which furnish the cheap trans- 

 port by driving and the cheap power for manu- 

 facture, which are so essential to paper making. 

 Spruce is preferred somewhat to balsam fir, as 

 the fibers are a trifle longer and the wood is 

 said to "cook" more easily in the digesting pro- 

 cess used for disintegrating the wood and re- 

 moving other substances than cellulose which it 

 contains. 



HOW THE FOREST IS REDUCED. 



Spruce and fir are almost always associated 

 in the northern forests and are often mixed with 

 th enative hardwoods. Under the conditions 

 of competition with other species in the virgin 

 of wild forest they grow on an average of about 

 one inch in diameter in ten years, but when 

 grown in the open, as on abandoned farm lands 

 or after a fire has destroyed a forest they grow 

 underat the rate of about one inch in four to six 

 years and in very favorable circumstances as 

 in plantations with proper spacing, they will 

 grow one inch in two to three years. The 

 average amount of wood which is cut on lands 

 under license from the Government in the Pro- 

 vince of Quebec according to the Government 

 regulations is between six and seven cords to the 

 acre. As it takes approximately one cord of 

 wood to make one ton of paper, a mill with an 

 output of 100 tons per day would have to cut 

 about eight square miles of forest every year. 



The most important matter for a paper mill 



is the supply of raw material for the future, and 

 this is taken care of generally to-day by acquir- 

 ing sufficient areas of forest land to insure the 

 supply. Mills which have not alerady done this 

 find it difficult, as parctically all the readily ac- 

 cessible lands have been sold. Many of the 

 largest and most progressive companies have 

 already begun to plant trees for future use or 

 are getting ready to do so. This is much the 

 better way to handle the problem, as the plan- 

 tations can be made on lands much nearer to 

 the mills, thus reducing the cost of fire pro- 

 tection and transportation, and as the yield on 

 planted lands is at least ten times that on wild 

 lands, the logging expenses are more concen- 

 trated and therefore much reduced. 

 Quebec's fire prevention. 



Fire protection for forests is a most import- 

 ant thing, and snce the formaition of the co- 

 operative fire protective associations the loss 

 from fire has been reduced to almost a negligible 

 amount. The forests are patrolled by men in 

 canoes, on horseback, on motor cycles, and in 

 automobiles, and patrol by aeroplane has re- 

 cently been adopted. Gasoline pumps are used 

 for extinguishing fires and the organizations 

 have been brought to a high pitch of efficiency. 



After fire protection, the most important thing 

 a forester has to do is to make accurate maps 

 and estimates of the amount of timber. This 

 is necessary so that it may be known how long 

 the timber holdings of a company will supply 

 the mill, where and how they are located, and 

 how they can be cut most economically and to 

 the best advantage. The logging departments 

 must have maps in order to plan their opera- 

 tions from year to year intelligently. 



Logging operations usually begin in the 

 latter part of August, when the contractors who 

 cut the logs go into the forests, taking often 

 their wives and families with them. Here they 

 build camps of logs, roofed either with split logs 

 or tarred paper, and the cracks of the logs are 

 stuffed with moss. These camps, although dif- 

 fering in size, are all built on the same plan. 

 They are oblong with a door in front, two or 

 three small windows, a rough table, and a few 

 benches and bunks for sleeping along one wall, 

 generally in two tiers. A large stove in the 

 centre is used for both cooking and heating. 

 If the wife lives in the camp a small room is 



