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CANADIAN FORESTRY ASSOCIATION 



VALENTINE STOCK, M.P.P. If you will pardon me for intruding on your atten- 

 tion to-day, I would like to say a very few words upon this discussion. Last year, in 

 seconding the reply to the speech from the Throne, I alluded to forestry. I showed 

 then, or at least tried to show, that we wera, here in this Province of Ontario, fast 

 creating the conditions which in many other lands they were trying to overcome. I 

 tried to show that our country needed clothes; that we were depriving it of its clothes 

 very fast, and through that we were changing our climatic conditions, changing the 

 fertility and productiveness of our soil, &c., and creating the conditions which in older 

 countries they were trying to overcome; that we should learn by their experience. 

 India, for instance, which has denuded . its hillsides and is doing nothing to re- 

 plenish her hillsides and watersheds, suffers from dreadful famines caused by drouth, 

 and in Australia they have had several years of drouth, with horses and cattle and 

 sheep dying out. Japan has iearned the lesson long ago, and, thanks to ref orestry, 

 that country looks like a garden. In the northern part of Africa, which used to be 

 a great waste, a great tract of land has been reclaimed by planting. Now I have 

 hoped, in addressing the House last session, that we should learn by their experience 

 and not wait here until we had the same conditions which brought about the baneful 

 results in these older countries. I asked the question : ' What can we legislators do ? ' 

 and I pointed out that we must educate the farmer to conserve and make the best 

 economic use of what he already has. Educate the farmer who has cleared off almost 

 all his wood lot, to replant. Now, I went further than that. I made the suggestion 

 to the Hon. the Minister of Agriculture, because I saw what seemed to me to be a 

 feasible scheme of doing that. We had our farmers' institutes here in Ontario. I 

 asked him to send out to these institutes men who could arouse the farmers and 

 awaken sufficient enthusiasm to cause men to replant, at the same time providing 

 the means to reforestry by taking a few acres of good land, and turn them into a 

 nursery for replanting. And the honourable minister made the announcement the 

 other day that that would be done. I am prepared to go a little further, and I submit 

 it to the gentlemen to-day to say if it is possible or not, and that is this : That there 

 will be planted at the Agricultural College several varieties of trees to be handed over 

 to theee farmers who wish to replant. Now, I think we can do a great deal of good in 

 this way. There are many farmers to-day who have ten or fifteen acres of wooded 

 land. There are on this ten or fifteen acres of land some large trees, some spreading 

 out like the beech trees, growing in the branches and nothing more, and which pre- 

 vents the land bringing in the return it ought to. I would advise that every farmer 

 be taught to cut away from one end. Select that part of his farm which he wishes 

 to continue as a forest, and cut away one acre at one end; clear it thoroughly as if 

 he were going to plant corn; apply to the Agricultural College for trees to plant there; 

 plant them as he would corn, so that he can go in between the rows with the horse 

 and scuffler for the first five years, and, in the course of five years he will have a second 

 acre prepared; and the third acre at the end of 15 years. At the end of 10 years he 

 could possibly coine along and thin out the first acre, and have a thickness of wood 

 the size of my arm, and in that way by cultivating five acres systematically he will 

 have far more wood than by letting ten or fifteen acres grow as you please. Now, I 

 think in the Agricultural College they should just show in that same way what could 

 be done on every hundred acre farm, one acre cultivated, another acre cultivated, 



