22 Canadian Forestry Journal 



urged a reconsideration of its policy in the granting of timbei 

 lands. Emphasizing the public interest in the forest, Dr. Fernow 

 gave as an illustration the fact that in Germany the forests under 

 government management, being nearly one-third, are in the best 

 condition. The governments that are now spending money in 

 protecting limits and improving limits, in building roads and 

 railroads and preparing the property for effective management, 

 are the governments that will earliest reap the benefit. 



Mr. Jas. Leamy, Dominion Crown Timber Agent at New 

 Westminster, described the fire protection organization carried 

 on on Dominion Lands in British Columbia. 



Dr. C. A. Schenck, of Biltmore, N.C., laid down as the 

 three planks of a Canadian forestry policy ; first, that the Domin- 

 ion and the provinces should retain in the hands of the Govern- 

 ment, in fee simple, all exclusively forest land; second, the protec- 

 tion of the forests from fire, and third, that the forest must be 

 made a paying investment, whether the individual or the Govern- 

 ment is the owner of the forest. 



EVENING SESSION 



WEDNESDAY, IOtH JANUARY. 



At the Evening Session, Hon. Sydney Fisher, Minister of 

 Agriculture, gave an address on "The Forest and the Water 

 Supply," speaking particularly of the so-called semi-arid district 

 in Southern Alberta, which depends largely on irrigation for its 

 fertility. Stretching away eastward from the lower hills of the 

 Rocky Mountains south of the C. P. R. we have a slowly descend- 

 ing plain descending eastwards and northwards with a very 

 considerable fall all the way from the mountains to about Regina. 

 Over that area generally water is scarce, so scarce that in many 

 parts of it, without irrigation, successful cultivation is supposed 

 to be impossible. I do not like to say myself positively that suc- 

 cessful cultivation is impossible anywhere, because in the develop- 

 ment of our Northwest especially, and in the development that 

 has taken place in many w^ays all over Canada we are constant- 

 ly, from year to year — I might almost say from month to month 

 — discovering new possibilities in the development of our country 

 which our fathers, and even people who have settled as recently 

 as ten years ago, thought to be quite impossible. Therefore, I 

 guard myself very carefully when I suggest that over a portion 

 of that area, at all events, there is doubt about the successful cul- 

 tivation of ordinary field crops. We must then look for some as- 

 sistance to the ordinary climatic conditions for the cultivation of 

 field crops, because that is the area of our country to which the 

 whole v/orld — not only Canada, but the British Empire and I 

 might say the whole world — is looking for its future wheat 

 supply. And it behooves us, therefore, to see what we can 



