54 CANADIAN FORESTRY ASSOCIATION. 



burning the brush and the needles from the surface of the ground, also killing all small 

 trees. The large cull trees remained, however, and seeded the ground. The resulting 

 stand was as fine as one could wish. The owners are now cutting this second growth 

 and are getting an average of about forty thousand feet, board measure, 'rough edge' 

 01 ' round edge ' per acre. This is equivalent to twenty or twenty-five thousand feet, 

 board measure, of square-edged lumber. This shows an. average annual production of 

 400 feet B. M. per acre per year for the sixty years. The soil was a fine deep sand and 

 conditions were otherwise favourable for white pine growth. 



I agree entirely with Dr. Schenck that nature works the same in the twentieth 

 century as she did in the eighteenth, or the first century. I am of the opinion that if 

 the lumberman gives her a fair chance she will continue to do the same as she has 

 done for thousands of years. But if the lumberman goes in and cuts the pine all, and 

 the pine only, there can be only one answer by nature. The inferior and weed trees 

 have poasession and the next crop is bound to be greatly inferior. If we maintain the 

 conditions nature will maintain her good work; if we improve on the conditions the 

 result will be improvement in the crop and vice versa. 



Mr. E. G. JOLY DE LOTBENIERE. Dr. Schenck's and Mr. Knechtel's remarks, as to 

 the natural reproduction of white spruce are of a nature to make one feel that con- 

 servative forestry is insufficient to ensure the perpetuity of our spruce forests, even 

 when cuts, at a reasonable diameter restriction, are made at intervals of from 10 to 

 15 years. I feel that it is presumption on my part -to differ from two such well 

 known authorities, who have given the matter such careful study and yet I humbly 

 maintain, that under certain conditions, a spruce forest may be cropped to advant- 

 age every 15 years, without endangering its perpetuity. 



The principal condition to attain this end is the strict enforcement of a rational 

 felling diameter. 



Such a course has become very difficult to put in force since the pulpwood in- 

 dustry has assumed such enormous proportions. Nature, with a bountiful hand, has 

 stocked our forests, in most sections of the country, with abundant material fit only 

 to be converted into pulpwood. It is but right that advantage should be taken of 

 this, but in doing so, every possible care and precaution should be taken, so as to 

 leave a sufficient quantity of young timber of proper dimensions on a tract, to re- 

 place within a reasonable number of years, that which has been removed. 



The Crown Land regulations of the province of Quebec, permit the felling of 

 white spruce at 11 inches on the stump; trees of other descriptions at 9 inches, but 

 black spruce, balsam, hemlock and other timber fit for pulpwood, may be felled at 7 

 inches on the stump. 



I will not attempt to criticize at the present moment these diameter restrictions, 

 for if they were rigorously observed, sufficient timber would be left to ensure a future 

 crop, within a reasonable number of years, but where white and black spruce are 

 felled together, piled or driven together and cut into pulpwood and corded together, 

 it is practically impossible to distinguish the white spruce from the black and un- 

 scrupulous lumbermen are in a position to devastate a tract with impunity. 



