Canadian Forestry Convention. 7 



effort has been made in this direction. I know that the lumber- 

 men keep a patrol of the woods of the Ottawa valley. And that 

 is a great improvement. But I submit, that this is not enough. 

 I submit that something more ought to be done, if it be only 

 to have more patrolmen. I believe that we should have the 

 woods patrolled as they are in Germany and France, so that, as far 

 as possible, every incipient fire should be prevented from spread- 

 ing. Moreover we should impress every man in Canada- — the 

 lumbermen, the sportsmen, the man out of any class — with the 

 belief that it is a crime, an absolute crime to throw a lighted 

 match upon the ground — (applause) — , to scatter the ashes of 

 a fire, or to leave a camp fire before it is absolutely extinguished 

 (loud applause). All these things are crimes and I would go 

 so far as to say that they should be made crimes under the law. 



There is another mode of destruction to which I want to 

 call the attention of the Convention and it is the destruction of 

 the railway locomotive. The railway locomotive is a great 

 blessing undoubtedly, and I am not here to say anything harsh 

 of it, but if you take the train at Halifax to go to Vancouver, 

 in every province of the Dominion, where there is timber, in 

 Nova Scotia, in New Brunswick, in Quebec, in Ontario, in British 

 Columbia, you will see miles and miles and miles of what was 

 once beautiful forest and which is now nothing but parched 

 and blackened timber, a monument to the destructive power 

 of the railway locomotive. I know that the railway men 

 have done a great deal to obviate this evil. They have used 

 all possible ways of overcoming the difficulty inherent to 

 the operation of the railway locomotive. They have put screens 

 upon their stacks, they have devised different methods, but all 

 these methods have been inadequate and I do not know that 

 in that direction they can do more than they have done, but 

 perhaps the railways ought to be compelled in the summer season, 

 at all events, to have extra patrolmen on their tracks so as to 

 prevent incipient fires, to follow sparks in their progress and to 

 extinguish them before they have caused any damage. I think 

 that is one question that ought to be carefully considered by 

 this Convention and I believe that if it were to do nothing more 

 than to prevent fires by railway locomotives this Convention 

 would have done a great deal, but I think it will do more than 

 that. 



There is another subject to which I would also invite the 

 attention of the Convention. That is tree planting. It is not 

 sufficient that we should preserve our forests where we have 

 forests. It is not sufficient that we should plant forests also 

 to a great extent, but we should invite people generally to give 

 more attention to tree planting at their homes and especially 

 upon their farms. The Canadian Government, some eight years 



