84 FORESTRY IN THE BRITISH EMPIRE. 



in the case of most of the colonies, where enormous areas are 

 available fit to produce many times the quantity of timber 

 annually imported into the United Kingdom. And yet, many 

 of them are already themselves imjjorting timber on a con- 

 siderable scale. 



India has to provide an enormous population of '294,000,000 

 people with timber, firewood and other forest produce ; apart 

 from a certain amount of teak and fancy woods, it can 

 probably do little towards an increased export of timber. 



The Dominion of Canada has, during the years 1900-1903, 

 exported, on an average, timber valued at i;4, 789,000 annually. 

 With proper measures of forest conservancy this quantity 

 could not only be maintained, but enormously increased. 

 But from many parts of the Dominion reports come of the 

 rapid diminution of the area under useful timber, which leave 

 no doubt that the exports must seriously decrease as time 

 goes on. This is due to reckless cutting without consideration 

 for the regeneration of the forests and to forest fires. Indeed, 

 the latter is by far the more formidable destructive agency of 

 the two. A timber land explorer reported a few years ago 

 that in one so-called "limit" in Manitoba 150,000,000 feet of 

 white spruce timber had been killed by fire in the course of 

 one season, that the fire not only killed the trees but 

 destroyed a good part of them and consumed the moss and 

 vegetable deposits on the ground down to a depth of one foot. 

 These matters are all the more important, because within a 

 limited space of time the United States of America are likely 

 to require every stick which Canada can spare, thus reducing 

 the imports to Britain very considerably. 



Turning now to Australasia it may be confidently asserted 

 that a systematic management of its forests is urgently 

 required. The annual imports of timber considerably exceed 

 the exports. At the same time, only New South Wales has, 

 it appears, extensive coalfields which provide coal for that 

 colony, and from which certain quantities are exported. Under 

 these circumstances it may well be asked, how matters will 



