CANADIAN FORESTRY ASSOCIATION. 109 



insuring of an adequate supply of timber for the development of the resources of our 

 own country is of the greatest importance to us. We are on the threshold of a 

 great national development. Presently millions of people will be seeking homes in the 

 comparatively treeless plains of the west, and aside from the character of the popula- 

 tion of the future, nothing will contribute more largely to our national advancement 

 than an abundant supply of timber. 



In the past our forest management, with the exception of somewhat better protec- 

 tion from fire and in the retaining of the fee simple of the land in the state, has not 

 differed materially from the forest management that has devastated the forests of the 

 United States, and which has begun the story of the man-made desert in our own 

 north country. Eeoently a tremendous step in advance was taken in the adoption of 

 the policy of placing the non-agricultural lands in permanent forest reserves. The 

 next and only logical step will be to train men in practical forest management that 

 1he forests on these lands may be handled so as to yield the largest possible revenue 

 in perpetuity. 



The possibilities of revenue from our vast heritage are very great. I have on 

 other occasions committed myself to figures on this proposition, which I consider to- 

 be very conservative. I will content myself to-night by saying that there is no reason 

 v T hy under a system of rational forest management, the present revenue from Cana- 

 dian forest lands should not be increased manyfold, not only without injury, but with 

 actual benefit to the forest. 



THE CONSERVATION OF NATIONAL RESOURCES. 



Nothing can be more important than that the natural resources of a country be 

 conserved intact. War, folly, or unrighteousness may result in the destruction of ac- 

 cumulated wealth, in the degradation or decimation of populations, but if the natural 

 resources of the country be unimpaired, rehabilitation will be but a matter of time. 

 On the other hand, the destruction of the natural resources is striking at the very 

 foundations of prosperity, and sooner or later will transform the richest lands to 

 poverty. To illustrate : Egypt has during the past ten thousand years been repeatedly 

 devastated of her accumulated wealth, but is again to-day entering upon what pro- 

 mises to be the most prosperous period of her long and checkered career. She is fully 

 recovering, or at least may fully recover from all kinds of former loss because her one 

 natural resource water for irrigation has remained intact. Germany for centuries 

 the battle-field of Europe has in recent years become more populous and more pros- 

 perous than during any other period of her history, notwithstanding repeated destruc- 

 tion of property and decimation of population in former times, for the natural re- 

 sources of the country remained practically intact. 



On the other hand, we may have many melancholy examples of the destruction 

 of the natural resources. Mesopotamia, once famed as the most fertile country in the 

 world, in which Herodotus said that the grape could not be grown because of the ex- 

 cessive humidity of the climate, is now a weary waste of sand and rock incapable of 

 supporting one man in poverty where it once supported a hundred in comfort. Pales- 

 tine, once a land flowing with milk and honey, Sicily, for a long time the granary of 

 the Roman empire, and Greece, are also excellent examples of countries which were 

 once the home of a teeming and prosperous population, but which with the destruc- 

 tion of their forests by reckless lumbering and fire have become the prey to erosion 

 by wind and water, and are to-day mere shadows of their former glory, without hopo 

 of ever materially bettering their conditions. They have destroyed their soil and 

 water, and generations yet unborn must reap the fruits of an ancient folly. 



But we do not need to go as far afield to find the man-made desert. There are 

 tens of thousands of acres of it in the state of New York, in Pennsylvania, in Michi- 

 gan, in New England, in California. But to come still nearer home, there are tens 

 of thousands of acres of it in British Columbia, in Quebec and in my own province 



