166 Canadian Forestry Journal. 



II. — On Lands Owned by The State. 



The Canadian provinces, with the exception of Nova Scotia, 

 have adopted the only safe poHcy of retaining in fee simple the 

 ownership of the non-agricultural lands for the purposes of wood 

 production. 



That this object may be successfully accomplished, it is 

 essential that the lands be kept under a crop of trees by either 

 natural or artificial means. It is quite beyond the scope of this 

 paper to discuss methods of reforesting, but a few general prin- 

 ciples will be briefly mentioned, that the influence of taxes on the 

 management and reproduction of the forest may be clearly seen. 



The reforesting of non-agricultural lands on a large scale 

 presents many practical difficulties which are not met with, or 

 met with only in a modified form, in restoring woodlots and sh.'lt- 

 er belts in an agricultural district. The greatest bar to the re- 

 planting of denuded or burned areas of non-agricultural lands, 

 is the danger of subsequent destruction of the plantation by 

 fire. This is practically eliminated in farming sections where 

 over-clearance has been practised. The planted woodlot has 

 a further advantage over plantations on wild lands for commer- 

 cial purposes, (i) in the amount of expenditure necessary in 

 making the plantation, it being possible on farms to do the w^ork 

 at odd times in early spring at a minimum of cost ; (2) in the prac- 

 ticability of greatly increasing the financial returns of the planta- 

 tion by giving it greater care as it developes, such as the removal 

 of inferior trees to favor the development of the better, thinn- 

 ings, etc. Such attentions are of course wholly out of the ques- 

 tion on wild lands where there is no market for the inferior 

 materials which would be removed in these "improvement 

 cuttings"; (3) in the nearness to market, enabling the farmer 

 to dispose of the better grades at much better advantage — the 

 cost of transportation being saved — and to utilize much material 

 profitably which is ordinarily waste in the lumber woods ; and 

 (4) in the fact that the farm woodlands, if rightly placed, may 

 have a very great value in favorably influencing the local climate 

 and thereby increasing the profit of farming the neighboring 

 cleared lands, and in enhancing the beauty and value of the farm 

 property. 



Commercial tree planting must for the present be very 

 largely limited to agricultural districts. As soon as the fire 

 problem is satisfactorily solved, it will undoubtedly be extended 

 to large areas of wild lands which have been devastated by unwise 

 lumbering and by fire to such an extent that seed trees of the 

 valuable species are not present, thus precluding the hope of 

 satisfactory natural recovery. Wherever the forest still remains. 

 however, a natural regeneration of the most valuable species by 



