CANADIAN FORESTRY ASSOCIATION. 23 



Previous to the establishment of a fire-ranging system in our province, this prac- 

 tice of setting out fire indiscriminately was commonly indulged in, and although there 

 \vas a Fire Act under which it constituted an offence so to do, little or no effort was 

 made to enforce the provisions of the Act. Mr. Stewart, the Dominion superintendent 

 of forestry, is entitled to the thanks of the people of British Columbia for the inau- 

 guration of the present system of forest fire ranging, and for bringing the system into 

 its present state of efficiency. 



Outside of the railway belt there are large areas of land which contain more tim- 

 ber than can be computed and which is not guarded at all. Prior to August of last 

 year, I think I might say without exaggeration that there were one hundred miles of 

 timber on fire, and nobody looking after it at all. Until the past few years the settlers 

 did not look upon their timber as being of much value; in fact most of them looked 

 upon it as being of no value at all. I am pleased, however, to be able to say that of 

 late years they have come to look at it in a very different light, and are gradually 

 being educated to the fact that their timber is a very valuable asset. Knowing this, 

 they are not nearly as liable to set fire to it. Formerly they would just go in and burn 

 the place clear, for the purpose of so-called cultivation. In the most of the places 

 so cleared, if you wanted to sow anything you would have to shoot the seed into the 

 ground with a rifle, it being in many cases steep side hills. 



Reforestation, however, is taking place in such a manner that you would hardly 

 believe it without seeing it for yourself. The whole country is covered with a crop 

 of young cedar, spruce and hemlock (which latter is good timber out in our district, 

 almost as useful as fir) ; it is all cropped over, and you can go up into the Shuswap 

 Lake district and see four or five hundred square miles of land on which this repro- 

 duction is taking place. The Shuswap is a very large lake, having, I suppose, three 

 or four hundred miles of coast line, with but poor means of ingress or egress, so that 

 if settled upon there would be very great difficulty in getting out the produce after 

 it had been raised there. In spite of this, the settlers want to get in there and settle 

 on this land, and I hold that the government should not allow them to do this. This 

 sort of land is not valuable as agricultural land, but it is very valuable for the new 

 growth of timber that is upon it, and should be conserved for such purpose. This 

 district was burned over some twenty-four or five years ago, and I know that the gen- 

 tlemen here from British Columbia will bear me out when I say that it is very densely 

 covered with a new growth of timber, a repetition of the former covering, which would 

 at present average from twenty to for'ty feet in height and eight or ten inches in dia- 

 meter at the stump. Twenty years hence this will be a very valuable asset in the 

 wealth of the province, and there will be a great many million feet of merchantable 

 timber available there. Suc'h places as these should be set aside, as has already been 

 recommended .to the department at Ottawa, and I am of the opinion tha't a further 

 recommendation from this association would help in this direction. 



I made the statement once and I think that Mr. Stewart will bear me out if I 

 venture to make it again ; it is that I consider that over a million feet of timber was 

 burned in the province of British Columbia, in order to enable one man to clear a 

 quarter -of an acre, to sow some potatoes on the place he had so cleared, and he never 

 planted the potatoes a<t alJ. 



