Canddidii Forcslrii .louinaL Januarij, li)18 



149- 



considcralioii for several years and 

 has made a beginning on a good sized 

 scale and is increasing its plantations 

 year by year. Other of the more 

 progressive concerns are following 

 suit. This again is no sentimental 

 proposition but good sound common 

 sense. Instead of having to drive 

 wood for 150 to 200 miles, it can be 

 grown within 5 or 30 miles of the mills 

 and taken by logging railroads from 

 the stump to the mill without the 

 necessity of tying up money in huge 

 storage piles for the winter. Instead 

 of cutting on an average of say six 

 cords to the acre, plantations should 

 yield from forty to seventy cords 

 depending upon the age of the tree^. 

 It may be possible to grow a spruce 

 for pulp wood in 14 years; it has been 

 done. Far less area will be required 

 than wath natural forests and lire 

 protection costs and management will 

 be much reduced. Studies begun on 

 cut over areas show that we shall 

 probably have to w^ait fifty to sixty 

 years for a cut of about three cords 

 per acre, paying ground rent at five 

 dollars per square mile per annum. 



Where Accuracy Counts 

 Let us look at this thing from 

 another standpoint. A concern has 



large timber limits from which it is 

 cutting. This reduces the capital 

 stock and therefore the value of the 

 limits, on which depreciation should 

 be written off each year^ just as is 

 done with every sort of properlx". 

 So that in examining into the timber- 

 land assets of a concern it is not 

 enough to know that they have so 

 and so many square miles of limits, 

 but w^e must know how much is 

 burnt, how much is lumbered and 

 how much timber per square mile 

 remains. Many concerns are carrying 

 limits on their books as an asset, 

 which are practically valueless and 

 more are an annual loss because 

 ground rent and fire protection have to 

 be paid for. Could not the owner of 

 timber lands, for the sake of his 

 business and for the sake of his bond 

 holders, replant each year the amount 

 that he cuts, just as he would replace 

 worn out machinery or plants? In 

 other words we must stop mining our 

 forests and put them under a system 

 of rational management as has been 

 done in European countries, under 

 pressure of necessity. The sooner we 

 commence, the less it will cost us and 

 the more we shall add to our national 

 riches. 



About British Columbia! 



The total area of the province of 

 British Columbia is 355,855 square 

 miles, or 227,747,000 acres. Of this 

 total area, the lumber industry has 

 at various times selected and acquired 

 title to the timber on nearly eleven 

 and a half million acres, or about 5 

 per cent, of the total area of the 

 province. The respective areas held 

 under the different forms of timber- 

 land title are as follows: 



Timber limits- 8,374,200 acres 



Timber berths (rail- 

 way belt) 1,123,117 " 



Crown grants (fee 



simple) 922,206 '• 



Timber leases- 619,125 " 



Pulp leases 354,399 " 



Timber sales. - 64,440 " 



Tan bark leases - 32,252 " 



Total 11,489,739 - 



The fact that title could be secured 

 to provincial timberlands, up to 

 December, 1907, for the formality of 

 staking and paying the annual taxa- 

 tion, may be assumed to have re- 

 sulted in title being taken to prac- 

 tically all the timberlands having 

 sufficient value to justify the pay- 

 ment of the taxes (license fees). 

 A more leisurely survey of the forest 

 resources has shown that some valu- 

 able areas w^ere overlooked, but it has 



