NOTES. 



Mr. Geo. D. Mendell, of Victoria, Australia, writing in the 

 Bendigo Independent, makes an urgent appeal to the Australians 

 to take up the question of forest preservation. Mr. Mendell visit- 

 ed Canada recently and evidently has a high appreciation for 

 what has been done here, as he holds Canada up to the admiration 

 of Australia as a shining example of progress and intelligent 

 foresight. As it is rather pleasant to be represented in this role 

 and it may strengthen the interest in the question of forestry to 

 know how others look upon Avhat we are doing, a few sentences 

 from the article may be uoted. Mr. Mendell says :— 



" It is only about six years since the Canadian Government 

 woke to the fact that one of its most valuable assets, its timber, 

 was being prodigally wasted. Ever alert to the possibilities and 

 future of trade, in which respect Canada imitates America and 

 supplies Australia, and especially Victoria, with an admirable 

 object lesson, the Government established a Forestry Department 

 and passed laws to make its work effective. The Canadians re- 

 gard forestry as the foster mother rather than the handmaiden of 

 agriculture, and the puzzle to the observer, unconnected with 

 either science, at first sight is that forestry is not considered the 

 equal, the peer of agriculture, and just as carefully studied in an 

 agricultural community like Victoria." 



Mr. Mendell also refers to the Canadian Forestry Associa- 

 tion, and urges the organization of a similar society in Victoria. 



"There are, as you know full well, two great classes of 

 forests and no more. There is the wild forest and there is the 

 civilized forest. People who know forests only through books, 

 I mt^an through bad books, not the books written by members of 

 this assembly, fancy that the wild forest is the thing. A time was 

 too when people thought that the wild man. the man in a state 

 of nature, was a nest of virtue and that, leading a kind of simple 

 life, he led also, of necessity, a model life. The truth is quite 



