The ToroYiio 1909 Convention. 7 



danger v/ould arise from the building of the Transcontinental 

 railway, some six hundred miles of which would be under con- 

 struction. 



Mr. Southworth thought it would be a mistake to include 

 the pulpwood growing on agricultural land as a provincial 

 resource; that would become the property of the settlers. Mr. 

 White thought that even in this case the money would mean 

 wealth to the settler and so to the province. 



Dr. Femow pointed out that, even if the present supply 

 of timber would last for thirty years, after that time there 

 would be people who would have to have timber. While Mr. 

 White's estimate of twenty and a half billion feet sounded large, 

 it would last the United States for only half a year. 



Conditions in the Maritime Provinces. 



Mr. F. C. Whitman, President of the Western Nova Scotia 

 Lumbermen's Association, then read a paper on "Forest Con- 

 ditions in Nova Scotia." In a few words he summed up the 

 conditions of forestry and lumbering in Nova Scotia as follows: 

 "The cutting of timber and the output of lumber have reached 

 the limit of reasonable production, and the increasing value of 

 lumber has a tendency to draw altogether too heavily upon our 

 diminishing timber reserves. The axe has struck into trees 

 that a few years ago were considered either inaccessible or 

 unmerchantable. In former years lumbering depended almost 

 entirely upon the rivers and streams, but the building of new 

 railways and steam logging roads have widened the field of 

 operations and added the menace of fire, which is too well known 

 to require comm.ent." He laid particular stress upon the 

 difficulties presented by the tenure of land in Nova Scotia at 

 present. The Crown land acreage amounted to 1,500,000 acres, 

 holdings by large lumber concerns to 1,900,000 acres and there 

 were 2,500,000 acres held in lots of 500 acres or less. "The 

 difficulty of administering these lands." he said, "will be ap- 

 preciated when it is remembered that in a single square mile 

 there is often a bit of Crown land, a timber lot and a settler's 

 holding." "We have in Nova Scotia," he remarked again, "a 

 fire fighting force, organized on preventive principles, that is 

 both effective and efficient." The scheme of fire protection had 

 been evolved, in the face of much discouragement, by the lead- 

 ing lumber firms of western Nova Scotia. In this connection 

 he paid a tribute to the law-abiding character of the people, 

 who recognized others' property rights and were willing to do 

 their part for the public welfare. The Government was now 

 projecting a plan for a descriptive siu-vey of the provincial 

 forest lands. The most difficult matters to be dealt with were 

 those involving conflicts of private interest with the public 

 interest. 



