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" Government would deserve the praise of the future inhabitants of the 

 country if they would originate a scheme for planting with young timber trees 

 the immense wastes of the Province of Quebec. Such an investment would certainly 

 not pay a dividend to this generation, but it would utilize what will only be a 

 wilderness when the present trees are all cut, and would be a mine of wealth to 

 those who possess it when the timber becomes large enough to be merchantable. 

 By maintaining a judiciously -matured system of planting, the supply might be 

 prolonged indefinitely ; as it is, the forests are denuded of all their valuable 

 timber and comparatively nothing grows up to supply its place. A very large 

 proportion of the country north of the Ottawa is not fit for farming, and never 

 can be properly made fit for grain-growing or pasturage, but it is admirably 

 suited for the growth of timber ; and even a limited experiment would soon 

 convince all as to the good results likely to accrue. The cost would be small, 

 there being many large tracts so cleared by repeated fires that there is nothing 

 left to burn. The expense would only be the cost of the plants and their planting, 

 and that would not be much ; for the seed could be sown in a cleared spot, where 

 the plants would be set out. The whole arrangement would, of course, require to 

 be planned by a practical man and properly carried out ; and, such being the 

 case, there need be no fear of the result. What is above suggested can be done, 

 and may yet be accomplished ; and he who does it will be a greater benefactor to 

 Canada than any of the statesmen of the present day." 



An English traveller, after noticing the apparently abundant supply of wood- 

 lands observed in passing through the settled parts of Canada and the same 

 remark would eqally apply to considerable portions of the once heavily-timbered 

 regions of the United States thus remarks, concerning the actual resources 

 of these forests in meeting the demands of commerce : 



" It must often happen to the traveller who travels only the more frequented 

 routes, when he sees great rafts made out of huge blocks of timber floating down 

 the Canadian rivers, to wonder what part of the country produces trees so much 

 larger than any to be seen along its way. Near the thoroughfares of Canadian 

 travel hardly any trees of great bulk remain. . . . The fact is that, for the 

 very large timber, the lumbermen have now to go deep into the country, and far 

 out of the common way. Along the travelled routes you see woods out of which 

 all the finest trees have been long ago cut ; and even where you do see trees of 

 large girth in Canada, they have seldom had such room to spread and such free 

 air around them as would have enabled them to develop into objects magnificent 

 in themselves. On the Ottawa, for instance, you may often observe how some 

 one tree in the thick forest having somehow been endowed with a little more 

 hardy vitality than its young and half -smothered fellows, has forced its way 

 right through their competing branches, got its head well into the clear, open 

 daylight, and so vigorously prospered as to have grown to immense sturdiness of 

 trunk ; but even it is pretty sure to bear marks of the hard struggle undergone, 

 and to have had its branches and off-shoots, on some side or other at least, checked 

 and hindered in their development, if not crushed and blackened into utter dead- 

 ness. Whatever charm Canadian woods may have, Canada is not the place to see 

 the beauty of fine single trees. To go in amongst Canadian woods are poor in 

 comparison with the new forest ; but when the eye ranges over a great tract of 

 them, often they are indeed most beautiful ; as, for example, where they rise and 

 fall over hillsides or undulating ground, or are interspersed with gray boulders 

 and sharp points of jutting rock, and are set off by contrast with waters brightly 

 glimmering at their foot. Such are the woods along much of the Ottawa's course, 

 picturesque and lovely at any time, magnificent when kindled with the colouring 

 <of an American autumn. Scenery like this will not easily pall upon the eye, but 



