CANADIAN FORESTRY ASSOCIATION. 15 



Another question is that of reforestation. This is a matter which does not appeal 

 very strongly to the average man in Canada. We seem to have such an illimitable 

 area of forest in this country that it has been thought we can never get rid of our 

 timber, and the idea has been that there is no necessity to bother with reforestation. 

 Tn my early days in the back country the trees were regarded as the enemies, if I may 

 so put it, of the settler, who made war upon them, cut them down and burned them 

 up, so that he might clear his land and grow crops. This feeling still prevails in the 

 rear parts of the country. In the early days I speak of, the timber other than pine 

 had no value, and the only thing to be done with it by the settlers was to burn it up 

 and get it out of the way. Now every kind of timber, owing to railway construction 

 and the development of pulp and paper industries, has a value, and settlers are able 

 to sell their timber other than pine for sufficient to start them out in a good way on 

 their farms, instead of burning it up as they used to do. The fact remains that 

 reforestation has not as yet taken any great hold upon the people of this country. T 

 suppose we may expect to see something done in this direction later on. At the pre- 

 sent time, beyond what has been done in the School of Agriculture at Guelph in con- 

 nection with the growing of young trees which may be distributed to the farmers .and 

 others who desire to replant, we cannot point to any progress. 



As one of the representatives of this association who attended the recent meeting 

 of the American Forestry Association at Washington, I desire to say that I never was 

 more pleased in my life than I was to see the magnificent meeting held there. The 

 President of the United States we found to be one of the most active supporters of 

 a forest policy. He was kind enough to come down to one of the theatres and address 

 the association for an hour or more upon the subject of ' The Forest Wealth of the 

 Nation,' and I never listened to a more forcible exposition of that question than I had 

 the pleasure of hearing from that eminent man upon that occasion. From some of the 

 President's remarks I found that they had the same classes of questions to deal with 

 that we have in this country, and he was very strong and outspoken upon the ques- 

 tion of people taking up lands merely for the purpose of skinning the timber, and 

 said he was aga'inst that class all day and every day. It was only in the city of Wash- 

 ington, and under the circumstances that prevailed there, that we could have had such 

 able and representative men present. The head of the American Forestry Bureau, Mr. 

 Pinchot, perhaps the strongest man in forestry matters on the continent, did everything 

 he could to make the meeting a success and was backed up and supported by the in- 

 fluence of the President. The government brought their experts from their different 

 forest reserves. We had toe engineers of the most important railways, mining ex- 

 perts, men interested in irrigation almost every interest that has to do with the use 

 or growth of timber was represented at this meeiting, and the views of the varied in- 

 terests were voiced by able papers read by practical and representative men. It 

 was, taking it altogether, the most instructive meeting I ever attended, and I tEink a 

 great deal of good will flow from it as far as the United States is concerned, and the 

 inspiration given us who were there from Canada was, otn our return home, to endea- 

 vour to create a strong sentiment in this country along the lines advocated at that 

 meeting, and if possible to bring about a meeting on similar lines in the Dominion 

 of Canada. 



