LETTER FROM MR. LOUIS MILLER. 



The following letter from Mr. Louis Miller, of Crieff, Scotland, 

 submitted by Mr. F. C. Whitman, President of the Western Nova 

 Scotia Lumbermen's Association, at the Forestry Convention, 

 contains a criticism of Canadian lumbering methods which is 

 frank, if not complimentary, and also shows that private enter- 

 prise is active in Nova Scotia in efforts to remedy the effects of 

 deforestation. Mr. Miller expresses his thanks for the new 

 Forest Fire Act, providing for a fire ranging system which has 

 been passed in Nova Scotia and continues : 



Unfortunately, however, the whole of Nova Scotia has not 

 adopted that fire bill, but only certain portions of it, and I wish 

 you could use your influence with the authorities to get it adopted 

 bv the whole of Nova Scotia. For instance, I have a.property 

 of about 100,000 acres of forest lands at Ingramport, at the head 

 of St. Margaret's Bay, and the district of Nova Scotia, in which 

 that property is situated, has not adopted the fire bill, and as 

 I am practically a stranger in Nova Scotia and only come across 

 for a month or two in summer, I don't know the parties to 

 whom to apply,, or I would urge them to get the whole of Nova 

 Scotia to adopt that fire bill. 



About two years ago we had a serious forest fire at Ingram- 

 port, caused by some fishermen coming out from Halifax— some 

 of the officers of the garrison regiment there — to fish in the lakes 

 on our property, with the result that they set fire to the forest 

 and burnt up about 10,000 acres. 



When a forest fire takes place in Nova Scotia, or any part of 

 Canada, a crop of bushes and hardwood comes up afterwards, 

 and the burnt ground is entirely lost for twenty or thirty years, 

 for it is only after that time that the natural crop of spruce trees 

 begins to come up. 



I have had large experience in Sweden during the past 25 

 years, and I have been all over Finland and Russia. The acces- 

 sible Russian forests are practically all exhausted, while those 

 of Finland and Sweden are very nearly the same. During the 

 past few years the Swedish people have taken alarm and started 

 a Government system of planting over the country, which is the 

 cheapest and probably the best I have yet come across. In 

 Scotland it costs £l per acre to plant young trees. In Sweden, 

 however, they plant the seed. Wherever a forest has been 

 destroved by fire, or has been cut down, the Government employs 

 a forester with about a dozen or twenty boys. The boys are 



