CANADIAN FORESTRY ASSOCIATION. 55 



The whole question, as I said before, depends on the strict observance of the dia- 

 meter restrictions. If they are carefully followed a new crop of valuable timber 

 should reward the conscientious and conservative lumberman after a lapse of 15 

 years. 



We have lumbered on our limits for considerably over hatf a century. The pine 

 lias practically disappeared, as the necessary conditions for its natural renewal have 

 never existed, but the spruce stands by us and at intervals of 15 years, one is sure of 

 finding a paying crop, on all sections that have been previously carefully worked. 



We do our best to prevent the felling of white spruce under 12 inches on the 

 stump and as long as we can hold to that felling diameter or even an 11 inch one, 

 we confidently expect to secure paying cuts over our territory, at intervals of 15 

 years. 



How could one expect to colonize a country if all the children that were born 

 and growing up were done away with ? It is the same thing with a forest; destroy 

 the young growth and your forest comes to a speedy end, preserve it, and it will last 

 you and those that come after you, for generations. 



Mr. KNECHTEL. Let me explain myself more clearly. If you go into a forest you 

 will find large trees, medium sized trees, poles, smaller growth, and very small trees. 

 Well, you take out the largest trees. lu ten years you go back again, and the medium- 

 sized trees will then be the largest. Perhaps they will not be quite as large as the ones 

 you took out first, but they are the largest trees, and you take them out. Then you go 

 back again ten years afterwards and you will find that the poles of the first time are the 

 largest trees, and you take them out the same as before, and so on until you have re- 

 moved from the forest all the growth that was there when you started to cut. Now, 

 if the seeding has not gone on during all this time, there will come a time when you will 

 have taken all the spruce out of the woods. That seems to me to be perfectly clear. 



Now, I contend that in our forests this natural seeding is not going on with suffi- 

 cient rapidity to perpetuate the conifer forests if they arc lumbered periodically, and 

 the seeding is what we have to depend upon. 



Professor ROTH. Just one word. I wish to join Mr. Joly de Lotbiniere in giving 

 hope. I do not believe in presenting any matter in a hopeless form unless you are 

 obliged to do it. 



Granted that we should run out of spruce in seventy-five years. Let us stick to 

 this diameter limit which Mr. Joly de Lotbiniere points out. Let us cut the first 

 and the second and the third cuts, and at the end of the third cut, we will be ready to 

 replace the spruce, if we have to. 



By that time we shall have learned to replace it artificially cheap enough, so that 

 we can go in and get another timber, as our friend Maxwell said, by the hundred 

 million ; but don't let us get scared. Let us see that those men who have had ex- 

 'perience on that point give us the benefit of their experience, and let us say to them 

 if they have been able to return in ten years and get another crop : ' Go ahead. Good 

 for you; but stick to your diameter limit. Don't overdo the thing; be reasonable; 

 and stick to the plan that you started out with.' 



