WAR CONSUMING BRITAIN'S FORESTS 



595 



sleepers than imported pitch 

 pine." 



Of the Canadian contingent 

 the London Times says : 



" If you would know the 

 lumberman of Canada and how 

 he works, go to the edge of 

 Windsor Great Park, where the 

 cross-road from Virginia Wa- 

 ter Station strikes the main 

 road between Egham and Sun- 

 ningdale. There, on the Clock 

 Case Plantation, you will see 

 over 150 men of the 224th Ca- 

 nadian Forestry Battalion con- 

 verting trees into railway sleep- 

 ers and boards at the rate of 

 anything from 15,000 to 20,000 

 board feet a day. 



" The plantation, which 

 forms part of the lands owned 

 by the Crown and adminis- 

 tered by the Commissioners of 



Woods and Forests, included a considerable area covered 

 with spruce, fir, Scots pine, and larch, with an under- 

 growth of chestnut. Not very long ago a party of experts 

 looked at the trees with the dispassionate measuring eye 

 of the undertaker, and gave it as their opinion that from 

 this wood it was possible to get 3,000,000 board feet of 

 timber. Today whole tracts of it have been swept clear 

 by the axe, and the quaint square tower of the old royal 

 lodge, which stands deep-set in the wood, and which, so 

 the story goes, by its resemblance to the case of a grand- 

 father's clock gave the plantation its curious name, is 

 visible from the roadway for the first time, perhaps, in 

 a hundred years. And still the Canadian woodsmen go 

 on, eating their way through the wood with a thorough- 

 ness that knows no mercy. 



By Courtesy of Country Life of England. 



STACKING THE SQUARED TIMBER 



With sawmills in the forests where the timber is cut, the Canadians are turning out many 

 carloads of lumber a day, most of which is shipped to the army in France. 



CANADIAN SOLDIERS FELLING TREES IN WINDSOR FOREST 



The English are much impressed with the vigor and the skill of this overseas battalion, composed, as it is, of 

 t experienced lumbermen from all sections of Canada. 



" The lumber camp is all Canadian men, machinery, 

 and methods. The men, who are drawn from all parts 

 of the Dominion, have the bronzed, healthy look and the 

 easy confident swing which we have learned to look for 

 in Canadians. The khaki under their blue overalls pro- 

 claims them soldiers ; they draw military pay and they 

 know the rudiments of military drill ; but first and last 

 they are woodsmen, with their craft at their finger-tips. 

 Every man knows his task and does it with an enviable 

 independence of orders or instructions ; yet from the 

 first stage to the last the work proceeds smoothly and har- 

 moniously. Let us follow the process, under the guidance 

 of the officer in charge and the sergeant who is ' foreman 

 of the bush.' 



" Facing the main road stands the mill ' home,' the 

 men generally call it flanked on the one side 

 by piles of logs and on the other by stacks of 

 sawn timber. Walk along the winding track 

 of a light railway, not yet completed, which 

 passes behind the mill, until you come to a clear- 

 ing, where burning heaps of ' brush ' lopped 

 from the tops of the fallen trees are filling the 

 air with the refreshing scent of the pine. 

 Here and there through the blue smoke you 

 catch a glimpse of a lumberman in a pictur- 

 esque slouch hat. A little further and you are 

 among a gang of ' fallers.' Watch how they 

 fell a tree, 70 inches or more thick at the base. 

 " A man with an axe kneels at its foot and 

 with a few dexterous strokes cuts a deep notch 

 in the trunk a few inches from the ground. 

 Two others with a cross-cut saw cut through 

 the stem on the opposite side. In half a minute 

 the tree begins to lean and there is a warning 

 shout. A second or two later, with a loud 

 cracking and rending sound, it topples and 



