

articles. Shoe pegs are estimated to require in the United States 

 an annual supply of 100,000 cords, whilst lasts and boot-trees 

 require 500,000 more. Even the manufacture of tools consumes 

 on this continent about half a million cords of the finest qualities 

 of timber. 



Vegetation is not distributed over the globe regardless of order. 

 There is a regular series of changes from the tropics to the Arctic 

 seas. Under the equator are the palms, bananas and plantains : 

 in the tropical zones on either side are the fig-trees and ferns of 

 tree-like growth ; beyond the immediate tropics are included some 

 of the vast sandy barrens or deserts of the warmer regions of Africa, 

 Asia, and America, in which grow the succulent fig-marigolds and 

 curious cacti ; in higher latitudes are the countries of the orange, 

 the pomegranate and the vine, with the zone of the pines, firs and 

 other evergreens beyond, shading thence gradually through 

 heathers and grasses, until at the base of the glaciers in polar lands 

 vegetation is chiefly met with in the form of variously colored 

 lichens mottling the bare rock. A series of changes precisely cor- 

 responding to this is met with on mountain sides. Vines are 

 cultivated in the valleys at the base of the Alps ; in the course of 

 the ascent chestnuts, beech trees, firs and little downy Alpine 

 plants become successively prevalent until at about 9000 feet the 

 region of continuous snow begins. These successive changes in 

 the vegetation are not inaptly likened to a series of belts of some- 

 what irregular breadth bound one above the other around the 

 mountain sides. 



Canada lies partly in the Arctic zone, characterized by an ab- 

 sence of trees, partly in a semi-Arctic zone of poplars and birches, 

 and partly in two more temperate zones of pines and beech trees, 

 whilst in the southern sections are a few of the characteristic trees 

 of the Middle United States. 



There are sixty-five species of trees in Ontario, Quebec and the 

 Maritime Provinces. Of these, excepting perhaps one, all are 

 found in Ontario, south of the Ottawa River and Georgian Bay, 

 whilst probably a dozen range as far north as James Bay. 



Not much is yet known of the range of our timber trees west of 



