82 



The Canadian Forestry Journal. 



provincial government. The municipali- 

 ties might be given power to acquire 

 lands for forestry purposes and such 

 lands might be worked under the 

 direction of the Provincial Bureau of 

 Forestry. By this means efficient 

 expert management could be secured at 

 low cost. The municipalities would bear 

 the cost of management, but as soon as 

 there were profits above the cost of 

 management these would be returned to 

 the municipalities. He anticipated that 

 these municipal forest reserves would 

 prove very profitable in time to come. 

 In the counties of Northumberland and 

 Durham there were 15,000 acres of sand 

 lands which it had been estimated could 

 be secured at an average of $5 per acre, 

 a total of $75,000. This on a four per 

 cent, basis would require about $4,500 

 per year to pay off interest and principal 

 in thirty years. This was not a large 

 sum for a municipalitv which had an 

 assessment of $25,000,000. Stress had 

 been laid upon the fact that this was a 

 work for the good of posterity, but he 

 pointed out that in a very few years the 

 first good effects would he felt in more 

 regular stream flow and in the stopjnng 

 dof rifting sand. 



Dr. B. E. Fernow, Dean of the Faculty 

 of Forestry of the University of Toronto, 

 laid down the general proposition that 

 governments should re-forest waste land 

 just as they assisted railways or under- 

 took any other internal improvement 

 on wide lines. In support of this he gave 

 three reasons: (1) it was improper public 

 policy to allow waste lands to remain so 

 if they could be made of profit to the 

 community; (2) our timber resources are 

 not inexhaustible, but relatively small, 

 hence the wood grown on these wastes 

 would be needed when ready for 

 harvest; (3) tree growing is too slow a 

 business for individuals to undertake. 

 On this latter point he gave the figures 

 worked out by professors and students 

 of the forestry course of the University 

 of Toronto in their woods camp on the 

 south shore of Lake Nipissing this 

 spring. These showed that in the forest 

 it took from 180 to 200 years to grow on 

 good soils a twenty-inch red pine tree — 

 a species specially adapted to these sand 

 soils — such as lumbermen require. On 

 poorer soils it took from 250 to 260 years 

 to attain this growth. White pine, under 

 the same conditions on good soils, at- 

 tained a diameter of 18 inches in 100 



[Photo by courtesy Farm and Dairy, Peterboro 

 Land which should be in timber still. This picture of a field in Clarke township, Durham county, 

 Ontario, shows that land which once grew magnificent timber is now a waste of blowmg 

 sand. Timber would grow again if given a chance. 



