76 Canadian Forestry Journal. 



the bulk of them terriV^ly mismanaged and destroyed. I have 

 reason to believe that the same state of matters exists every- 

 where in Eastern Canada, and that the forests there are much 

 more exhausted than the Government or the people who own 

 them themselves believe. In fact, I don't know where to find 

 a really good forest to purchase in any part of Canada or Nova 

 Scotia ; they have all been cut down recklessly without any system 

 at all. The easiest and best of the trees have been cut, the root 

 cuts taken off for logs, and the great big tops allovv-ed to lie in the 

 forest. In fact, the forests have just been wasted and destroyed, 

 and the Canadian Government will have to waken up im.mediately 

 ere it is too late. All over Quebec and New Brunsv\dck the big 

 trees have been exhausted, and if the Government were to insist 

 upon their conditions being adhered to and only those trees cut 

 of stipulated size according to law, three-fourths of the Quebec 

 and New Brunswick mills would have to close, because they are 

 at present fed with under-sized trees, which, according to Canad- 

 ian laws, are being illegally cut. 



The Canadian Government should send young men to 

 Germany for a year or two's study of forestry and forestry laws 

 adopted there, their system being perhaps the best at present 

 in existence. I think, however, that the Swedish system would 

 be far cheaper and more suitable for Canada than probably the 

 German system. The Germans have cheap labour and they can 

 afford to plant young trees, but labour is dear in Canada, and the 

 Swedish system, if adopted, would, I think, be more suitable for 

 Canada and Nova Scotia, because it would be cheaper and could 

 be done on a much larger scale. The German forestry laws com- 

 pel proprietors to replant the ground and not to allow it to lie 

 waste. 



In fifteen years the pine in the Southern States of the United 

 States will be exhausted; the United States will then be in 

 desperation for lumber and will haA'e to get its supply from 

 Canada or the Pacific Coast. Canada -will not be able to give 

 the United States half the supply it requires, because Canada has 

 destroyed and exhausted its accessible forests much more than 

 people have any conception of, and the sooner Canada sets about 

 preserving and protecting its forests and replanting the burnt 

 ground, the better it will be for the future of the country. 



I have been through the Northwest of Canada as far as the 

 Pacific Coast, all through Manitoba on to Vancouver, and am of 

 the opinion that Canada requires all its Eastern forests to supply 

 the plains of Manitoba and the Northwest v.dth the necessary 

 lumber, during the next twenty to thirty years. I have been 

 all over Quebec and New Brunswick, and everywhere I have gone 

 to examine forests, I have found them depleted and exhausted, 

 and especially in Quebec, no sooner is a forest cut down than a 



