CURRENT LITERATURE 



633 



CANADIAN DEPARTMENT 



ELLWOOD WILSON, SECRETARY, 



CANADIAN SOCIETY OF 



FOREST ENGINEERS 



On the 31st of August a most interest- 

 ing meeting tool< place at Tupper Lake. 

 Dr. Fernow invited a few foresters to 

 met him there and look over the planta- 

 tions which were made at Axton by the 

 first Cornell Forestry School between 

 1898 and 1904. A number of Canadian 

 Foresters went down by motor, Clyde 

 Leavitt, C- D. Howe and R. D. Craig of 

 the Dominion Conservation Commission, 

 and Ellwood Wilson of the Laurentide 

 Company. The Cornell forestry students 

 with Professors Spring and Bentley 

 came over from their camp, Professor 

 Bryant of the Yale Forest School and 

 Professor Recknagel, Forester to the 

 Empire State Forest Products Associa- 

 tion and Messrs. Gaylord and Stubbs 

 from Nehasane Park together with Dr. 

 Femow made up the party. The plan- 

 tations were thoroughly studied and in 

 the evening a discussion of the best 

 methods of handling cut over lands in 

 the Adirondacks took place. The chief 

 lesson to be learned from the work done 

 by Dr. Fernow, is, as seen by the writer, 

 that indiscriminate planting, just for the 

 sake of planting something, is a waste 

 of time and money, whether done by the 

 State or anyone else. The object to be 

 attained should be carefully considered, 

 trees best suited to the soil conditions 

 should be chosen, seed should be care- 

 fully selected, only the very best trans- 

 plants should be used and these should 

 be as large as can be conveniently hand- 

 led. Considering the length of time 

 needed to produce a crop of timber and 

 the investment involved anything less 

 than a fully stocked area falls short of 

 the end desired. Ragged, uneven sized 

 stands are a waste of time and money. 

 Probably the only way in which results 

 can be hastened is by planting on the 

 largest possible sized and most vigorous 

 stock. British Columbia and western 

 trees do not seem to be worth planting 

 in the east, Norway spruce has shown 

 that it is an excellent tree for fair to 

 good soils and Scotch Pine certainly does 

 splendidly, and for a first crop on poor 

 and burnt over lands and where quick 

 results are desired has no equal. The 

 planting up of the waste and burnt over 

 lands in the Adirondack Preserve should 

 be continued, but on a much larger scale 

 and some planting plan should be devel- 

 oped and put in practice at once. 



One of the most interesting develop- 

 ments in Canada is the change in public 

 opinion in regard to its forest resources. 

 A prominent lumberman and senator, 

 who a few years ago pooh-poohed for- 

 estry methods as unpractical, and 



thought that timber would grow fast 

 enough to reproduce the stand every 

 thirty or fifty years, now declares on the 

 floor of the Senate that Canada has only 

 enough timber to supply the United 

 States for eight years and that our ideas 

 of our timber resources are greatly ex- 

 aggerated- Paper manufacturers have 

 stated before the Commission at present 

 investigating their business, that they 

 have only pulpwood enough for fifty 

 years more. It is to be hoped that the 

 public and those interested in timber 

 lands will awake completely to the 

 dangers of the situation and will help to 

 improve the systems of fire protection, 

 force the various provincial governments 

 to reorganize their colonization policies 

 and will eliminate the logging wastes 

 and inaugurate practical and rational 

 sylvicultural and planting operations. 

 The Dominion Forest Products Labora- 

 tory is doing splendid work along these 

 lines, but we need a real forest labora- 

 tory in the open, where questions of vi- 

 tal importance to our forest can be stud- 

 ied out. A few of these may be stated. 

 The best ways of logging and utilizing 

 our different forest types, so as to make 

 the most out of them and at the same 

 time to leave them in the best possible 

 condition for the future. How to handle 

 our burnt over areas, what species of 

 trees to plant on diflerent soils and un- 

 der different conditions. How best to 

 encourage natural reproduction, how to 

 drain and plant our large areas of swamp 

 lands, and how we can most economi- 

 cally transform our wild forests, con- 

 taining a large admixture of species of 

 no commercial value, into well stocked 

 areas producing the largest possible 

 number of the most valuable trees and 

 at the same time keep our industries de- 

 pendent on the forest supplied with a 

 sufficient quantity of raw material at a 

 profitable price. These are some of our 

 most important problems and they 

 should be scientifically and systematical- 

 ly attacked by trained men, for the results 

 would be of untold benefit to the whole 

 country. 



The Canadian Forestry Association 

 has obtained a very good moving pic- 

 ture film which will be shown at moving 

 picture houses throughout our forested 

 districts- It shows the beginning and 

 progress of a forest fire, the result of 

 carelessness, and the terrible destruc- 

 tion caused by it. The educational cam- 

 paign of the Association is progressing 

 favorably and is doing a great deal of 

 good. 



In British Columbia the season has 

 been a bad one for fires and anxiety still 

 continues. In Spruce Valley ten lives 

 are thought to have been lost and three 

 camps of the Elk Lumber Company, to- 

 gether with large quantities of logs and 



supplies, have been wiped out. The 

 Crow's Nest Valley in Alberta also" had 

 a bad fire in the district operated by the 

 McLaren Lumber Company. This was 

 promptly taken in hand by Mr. R. M- 

 Brown, the Forest Supervisor, and Mr. 

 E. H. Finlayson, the District Inspector, 

 who managed to keep the fire under con- 

 trol. It is reported that the fires which 

 took place in Northwestern Ontario 

 earlier in the season were much exag- 

 gerated. In Quebec, New Brunswick and 

 Nova Scotia only a few insignificant fires 

 have been reported- 



At the auction sale of timber limits by 

 the Province of Quebec, several limits 

 were sold at a price of $400.00 per square 

 mile. These were along the line of the 

 National Transcontinental Railway about 

 235 miles northwest of Quebec. 



The Quebec Forestry Branch has put 

 a party in the field to study the condi- 

 tion and the amount of growth and re- 

 production on cutover lands and will 

 soon follow with two other parties. 



Mr. R. H. Campbell, Director Domin- 

 ion Forestry Branch, recently inspected 

 the plantations on drifting sands at 

 Lachute, Quebec, and also the Govern- 

 ment Nursery at Berthierville in com- 

 pany with Mr- G. C- Piche, Chief For- 

 ester. 



Mr. J. H. Cunningham of the Lauren- 

 tide Company, Ltd., has just completed 

 a very complete and practical adaptation 

 of the Dewey System of Decimal Classi- 

 fication to the needs of the Pulp and 

 Paper industry. 



CURRENT TTtERATURE 



FOR SEPTEMBER 



(Books and periodicals indexed in the li- 

 brary of the United States Forest Ser- 

 vice.) 



Forestry as a Whole 

 Proceedings and reports of associations, 



forest officers, etc. 

 India Coorg Forest dept. Progress re- 

 port of forest administration for 191S- 



1916. 26 p. Bangalore, 1917. 

 Street and park trees 



Forest Aesthetics 

 Newton, Mass. Forestry dept. Annual re- 

 port of the forest commissioner for the 

 year ending Dec. 31, 1915. 42 p. pi. 

 Newton, 1916. 



Forest Education 

 Arbor Day 



Massachusetts forestry association. Arbor 

 and bird day. 8 p. il. Boston, Mass., 



1917. (Bulletin 121.) 



Ohio Dept. of public instruction. Arbor 

 day and bird manual. 80 p. il. Co- 

 lumbus, Ohio, 1917. 



Forest Description 



Maryland State board of forestry. The 

 forests of Maryland, by F. W. Besley. 

 152 p. pi., maps. 29 cm. Baltimore, 

 Md., 1916. 



