CANADIAN TIMBER TREES. THEIR D> <IBUTION 

 AND PRESERVATION. 



BY A. T. DRUMMOND. 



Apart from agriculture, no individual industry in Canada has 

 such importance as the lumber trade. In the United States, 

 industries based on the manufacture of lumber and timber are only 

 exceeded in point of magnitude by the iron interests. The extent 

 of territory on this Continent covered by forests, the number of 

 men directly employed in preparing the products of these forests 

 for market, and the very numerous and important industries to 

 which the use of timber and lumber give rise, all point to the 

 subject of our timber trees as of national interest. We have, in 

 fact, little conception of the magnitude of the lumbering business 

 in the country, until we are brought face to face with statistics 

 in regard to it. About twenty-one per cent, of the whole American 

 Continent is believed to be woodland. In North America alone, 

 it is estimated that 1,460,000,000 acres are covered by trees, and 

 of this quantity about 900,000,000 are in Canada. Contrast this 

 with the acres of forests and woodlands in the European States. 

 Prussia has, it is said, about 10,000,000 acres ; Bavaria, 3,300,000, 

 France, 2,700,000 ; whilst England and Belgium are so denuded 

 of forests as to have but insignificant areas of these in proportion 

 to their sizes. These vast woodlands in Canada include a very 

 considerable portion of Ontario and the eastern provinces, and of 

 British Columbia, whilst in Manitoba, the country, excepting in 

 the Eastern and North-Western sections, is chiefly prairie, and in 

 the North-West Territories, the true forests are largely along and 

 north of the Saskatchewan. 



A few facts will give some conception of the importance of 

 these vast woodlands to us, and at the same time of the enormous 

 annual drain on our lumbering resources now going on. In the three 



