CANADIAN FORESTRY ASSOCIATION. 11 



desire to express our thanks for having placed at our disposal its beautiful council 

 chamber. 



In connection with the subject of forestry, we are at once reminded that here, 

 during the French regime, were promulgated the first timber regulations made on the 

 continent of America, and it is interesting to know that some of the questions and 

 difficulties that confronted the earliest rulers of this land have persisted during all 

 the years since, and are as live and difficult questions to-day as they were hundreds 

 of years ago, for instance, the question of the right of settlers to take timber for 

 building purposes, to cut and dispose of timber required in clearing their land for 

 cultivation. In fact we have, running through the crown timber regulations of the 

 provinces of Quebec and Ontario like a golden thread, certain "principles that were 

 formulated hundreds of yearn ago, and this is a very curious as well as interesting 

 fact. 



JNow, -coming to the formation of forestry associations on this continent, I think 

 the first impetus given to anything of this kind was at a meeting held in the city of 

 Montreal in the year 1882, which was the first meeting in connection with forestry 

 matters held in the Dominion of Canada. The good seed sown at that meeting and 

 at the meeting of the Forestry Association held in this city in the year 1890, at which 

 I had the pleasure of being present, has taken root and grown to proportions upon 

 which we may fairly congratulate ourselves. A reference has been made by some of 

 the previous speakers to the kind interest taken in our work by the present Governor 

 General. This recalls to my mind that Lord Stanley, now Earl of Derby, when Gov- 

 ernor General, attended the sessions of our meeting in 1890, and commended us for 

 the important work in which we were engaged. From 1890 down to 1900 nothing was 

 done in the direction of creating a distinctly Canadian forestry association, though 

 the American association had come into existence and many of us were members of 

 it. In the latter year, however, Mr. Stewart, who has done so much for forestry in 

 Canada, took in hand the formation and organization of the Canadian Forestry Asso- 

 ciation. It was established in Ottawa, and since then has been progressing, slowly, 

 1 regret to say, but still progressing along the lines we had marked out for the society. 



The importance of the objects the association had in view was clearly understood 

 by those who brought it to life. Those of us who took an interest in forestry knew 

 the enormous forest wealth of the provinces of this Dominion, that we had forest 

 resources which, if taken care of, were sufficient to provide large revenues for public 

 purposes for an indefinite time, provided they were protected, conserved, and the tim- 

 ber was disposed of upon sound public principles. This association hoped, amongst 

 other things, to impress upon the various governments interested the wisdom of taking 

 steps to protect and husband the forest wealth entrusted to their care by a beneficent 

 Providence. Particularly we felt that much might be done to prevent the great 

 destruction of timber incident to forest fires. Experience had taught us that when 

 a forest fire gets fairly started it would be impossible for even an army of men to 

 suppress it, but we knew that much could be done to prevent the starting of forest 

 fires if some system were devised which would inculcate a spirit of care in the use of 

 fire on the part of, settlers, hunters, lumbermen, explorers and others who might be in 

 the forest during the dry summer season. It was thought that by placing a number 



