Farm Forestry in the Eastern Provinces. 55 



afforestation, educational and practical, which it is now pursuing. 

 Quebec still has its great forests, but the settled portions are, 

 in many cases, bare of trees. It has no such systematic policy 

 as to forestry as its great sister province ; but the farmer there, 

 too, is alive at last to the advantages of the wood-lot, and will 

 henceforward compel an enlightened policy not only with regard 

 to the maintenance of the proper proportion of field and forest 

 of his own locality, but also, since it affects him and the people 

 generally, a conservative administration of the great forests of 

 the Province. 



In Maritime Canada there is still much to be done. The 

 three Atlantic Provinces, smaller than the others as they are, and, 

 therefore, divided and weakened in the effort which the times 

 so imperatively demand in the way of forestrv', can scarcely be 

 said to have given this question the consideration it deserves. 



Apart from Prince Edward Island, agriculture has not been 

 the exclusive occupation of their people. Nova Scotia is a large 

 mineral Province, and the development of these riches has 

 occupied her attention almost entirety. Out of thirteen millions 

 of acres scarcely one million is given up exclusively to agriculture, 

 and except in the alluvial stretches which form her rich fodder 

 fields, the land has not been in any locality so completely denuded 

 as to threaten the failure or to adversely affect the growing 

 capacity of her cultivated fields. An economic timber policy 

 is greatly to be desired, however, and this will very beneficially 

 affect not only the cultivated areas of to-day, but those which 

 to-morrow may in the needs of greater production, be subjected 

 to the plough. 



New Brunswick is a well wooded Province of seventeen 

 million of acres, only a very small portion of which is given over 

 to agriculture. The growing of timber for the money that is in 

 it has been always a commercial pursuit of the people although 

 no systematic forestry has ever been inaugurated. A great 

 portion of the lands still remain under the Crown. Some ten 

 millions of acres are granted lands, it is true, but even those are 

 practically half under forest of some kind. Certainly less than 

 five millions of acres are devoted to crop production; and, so 

 far as we know, no organized" system of farm forestrv has yet 

 been demanded or evolved. Of the seven and a half millions 

 under the Crown, possibly six and a quarter are under timber 

 license and the remainder burnt or barren areas. In the farming 

 sections the errors of other places are apparent. The wood has 

 been cleared away and in many cases whole portions of country 

 bared of trees to the great disadvantage of successful agriculture. 

 New Brunswick, while not under present circumstances vindicat- 

 ing to itself, the title of an agricultural province is nevertheless 

 susceptible of successful field culture much more generally than 



