Forestry in Ontario. 181 



have upon his property is a wood lot, well stocked with a variety 

 of thrifty well grown trees, upon which he can draw, as occasion 

 requires, for such wood material as he needs for his own use, with 

 some to spare at times for the market. The uses to which farm 

 grown timber can be put are almost incalculable and the de- 

 mand is continuous. The wood lot should occupy the poorer 

 parts of the farm, rocky or stony land, the thin-soiled ridges, 

 very dry sand tracts and such wet swampy places as are not well 

 fitted for agricultural purposes. 



Various systems of managing a wood lot may be adopted, 

 both to ensure permanence and profit. Where only firewood, 

 fencing, hop poles, box Itunber or such small stuff is required, 

 and the wood lot is composed of deciduous trees only, the 

 copse or coppice method, viz., growing from sprouts, will do 

 very well, but if dimension timber is desired, or a growth of pine, 

 spruce, hemlock or other coniferous trees is the object to be 

 attained, the coppice system is not available; in such cases 

 natural seeding or replanting are the only sources to be relied 

 on to keep up the supply. Planting is always troublesome and 

 more or less expensive, but may under certain circtmistances, 

 become absolutely necessary. Natural seeding costs nothing, 

 is no trouble and is the most certain and in every way the most 

 satisfactory method of keeping the wood lot up to its best stan- 

 dard of production. A proper proportion of seed bearing trees 

 should therefore be retained in such positions over the whole 

 lot as to ensure their furnishing sufficient seed to replant each 

 portion of the wood lot as the timber is taken off it. This does 

 not mean the maintenance of a lot of old trees upon the land 

 until they shall have lost their usefulness as timber, but merely 

 until such time as the cleared area surrounding them produces 

 a strong growth of saplings from the seed which they have 

 dropped. Provision for this can best be made by doing the 

 annual cutting on a regular system under which the young 

 growth outside the area to be cut over will be safe from injury, 

 and the cleared portion will be at once seeded by the seed-bear- 

 ing trees left for that purpose. In some parts of the country 

 there are still wood lots in the possession of farmers, which have 

 been regularly and systematically cut over for thirty or forty 

 years, but which show no signs of deterioration, simply because 

 the work has always been properly done with a view to repro- 

 duction of the trees, and care has been exercised at all times to 

 avoid the destruction of the saplings. 



Included with the report arc the series of lectures on Fores- 

 try, delivered by Dr. B. E. Femow at Queen's University in 

 January, 1903. 



