1907 DEPARTMENT OF LANDS, FORESTS AND MINES. 161 



your experience of the manufacturing district in your own neighborhood 

 than to the whole country? 



A. I spoke more decidedly with reference to my own neighborhood, 

 hut I believe it to be applicable also to the port of London. I refer to the 

 prices current, and the import of the port and consumption of the different 

 articles, and I find that the consumption of colonial timber is growing very 

 much upon that of the Baltic. 



Q. Have you reason to believe from your intercourse with the leading 

 builders in Lancashire, that the estimation of American timber is much 

 increasing? , 



A. No doubt of it. 



Q. Can you state any facts upon the subject'? 



A. I can state the opinions I know to be entertained by other people. 

 I know that Mr. Bellhouse, who is the largest dealer in Manchester, has 

 changed the views he formerly entertained as to the comparative merits of 

 the two timbers, and that he now gives a decided preference to the timber 

 from the Colonies. 



Q. For all purposes? 



Red and White Pine. 



A. For all purposes. He, in building large warehouses, has latterly 

 consumed Canadian yellow pine in preference to Canadian red, Dantzic or 

 Memel. He states, I think, that he consumes about 50 cargoes a year, and 

 even when he can get lengths of Canadian red timber or Memel timber to 

 suit the purpose, he uses in preference Canada yellow pine, and he states 

 his reason that, for the last 15 years he has been a close observer of the 

 different qualities of timber and the different effects produced upon it by 

 exposure to the air and influence of atmosphere, and he finds that when 

 you introduce the yellow pine of Canada into brick and mortar the ends are 

 little liable to decay, and that the ends of either of the red pine timber 

 from C^anada, or of Memel and Dantzic timber, are more liable to decay. 



Q. Does that extend to out-door window frames and such things? 



A. "We have long used the red pine timber from Canada for that pur- 

 pose. 



Q. Is it more durable when exposed to change of atmosphere? 



A. In this country we have not a very great variation of climate, and 

 I apprehend that either timber, if sufficiently exposed to the air will prove 

 durable. 



Q. Is not this opinion of Mr. Bellhouse the result of long experience, 

 and is it not a change from his former opinion? 



A. Decidedly; and in Glasgow where I know at first thev us^d, for 

 building purposes nothing but Baltic timber, this year, I wrote to Glasgow 

 to a correspondent of my own, a large dealer in timber, to give me a state- 

 ment of the proportion of each sort in consumption there, and he told me 

 that the whole consumption in Glasgow of Baltic timber last year was not 

 200 loads " "" 



Speaking of the views of timber exiierts given before the House of 

 Lords Committee in 1820 Mr. Miller added: ''I think they were under a 

 mh.'^ake >which time and further experience have rectified. I know the 

 nature of the evidence adduced at that time and, so far as mv own experi- 

 ence sroes. almost every opinion there stated has proved to be wrong." 



In short the history of the growth of progress of the Canadian timber 

 export trade to Great Britain is simply a repetition of the familiar storv of 

 iinreasonino- and prejudiced opposition to every new departure from the 



