< YKAI:I.\<; I'.rsn LANDS IN UICITISII COUMIHA. 39 



powder, aiul are particularly useful on land on which the limber has not been cut 

 down very long and the stumps are comparatively green. However, before anybody 

 invests money in any kind of stiimping-machine it will be advisable for him to spend 

 a few days, or even a week or two in going round and wat-hing somebody else use 

 the same machine. The satisfactory and economical use of any kind of machinery 

 means a certain amount of mechanical ability on the part of the man who is going 

 to use it, and unless he has this mechanical ability he had far better keep away 

 from any kind of machinery at all and depend upon powder, an axe, a shovel, and 

 a saw. 



THE ACID OR DOPE METHOD OF STUMPING. 



For the last thirty years, and probably longer, there have been, generally in 

 the Sunday editions of the daily papers, although occasionally in the more widely 

 read weeklies, accounts of some wonderful new method of taking out stumps with 

 sarnie kind of acid or mysterious preparation which is supposed to make a stump 

 particularly easy to burn, without the usual more or less laborious method of taking 

 out the stump first. About every three or four years there is an epidemic of these 

 newspaper articles. They generally come out in the slack season in newspaper 

 offices. It is a strange thing that, although these systems of Inking out stumps 

 at a nominal cost have been continually brought before the public for so many years, 

 none of them seem to have come into general use, and it is just as well to issue a 

 word of warning to the settler against spending either money or time in experi- 

 menting on these lines. If there was anything in it, there is no doubt that some of 

 the many agricultural associations, governmental and otherwise, would have taken 

 this system up long ago. As a matter of fact, in many parts of this Province certain 

 kinds of stumps can be burned out completely without any "dope preparation" or 

 "stumping" in the ordinary sense of the word. This is more particularly the case 

 in the dry and semi-dry districts, but in the Lower Fraser and on the Coast, where 

 the land-clearing problem is of real importance, the ground a few inches below the 

 surface is always so moist that the wood-fibre of the stump never really dries out, and 

 until it is dried out it is obviously impossible to burn it. No acid or dope preparation 

 can forcibly eject this water in the wood-fibre of the stump. The natural juices of 

 the wood are only circulating while the tree is living. When it is dead (like the blood 

 in the human body) they cease to circulate, and unless the moisture in the stump 

 can in some way be got rid of it is obvious that it could not be replaced by any 

 of these dope preparations acid or anything else. In the writer's rather long 

 experience of clearing land he has never come across any instance of any of these 

 acid systems of getting rid of stumps having been tried successfully, or even with 

 partial success. 



COST OF CLEARING. 



In the previous edition of this pamphlet estimates were given of the costs of the 

 various operations of clearing land chopping, burning, branding-up, logging, stump- 

 ing, and so forth. These estimates were made over twelve years ago and are entirely 

 out of date now. Comparatively little contract-work has been done in recent years 

 since the great rise in wages occurred so that it would not be safe to make any 

 estimates of the costs now. The writer, however, has cleared up a good many 

 hundreds of acres of avera-e-t imberod land in the Lower Fraser Valley, and some 

 of it in years gone by has been put in cultivation at as low a figure as $50 an 

 acre. The same land to-day, if the work were done by either contract or day-work, 

 would probably cost $LMK) an acre and sometimes more to clear; but any settler 

 who is taking hold of a piece of bush land cannot take into consideration the present 

 sc;ile of wages, as a great deal of the work of clearing is done in his spare time and 

 between seasons. It was a usual thing some years ago to contract for the taking-out 

 of large old-growth cedar stumps at from S1.r,o to $2.50 each. The work was done 

 with teams and blocks and tackle, with practically no powder. At that time a man 

 and team woiv worth $r> a day and a man without a team $12 a day. This work was 



