1872 



Canadian Forestry Journal, September, 1918 



other buildings the French said: 

 "Get them here." 



Our Part in Restoration. 



When I went to France in 1917 

 Canadian skilled workers had already 

 done much good work. We now 

 have there about 9,000 skilled Ameri- 

 cans and seventy or eighty sawmills, 

 portable, of all sizes, scattered over 

 central and southern France. The 

 spirit of our men is wonderful. Thev 

 get 30,000 feet per day from a 10,000- 



foot mill. The French have had 

 to cut their picturesque highway 

 poplars but we are seeking to leave 

 no scars in France. The forests^are 

 not only paid for, but also they are 

 going to be reforested. Scotch and 

 English forest ofTicers have already 

 said that the work is 'being well done. 

 I should like to see American 

 engineers leave the roads and the 

 smashed forests and even the fruit 

 trees of France all replaced. Let 

 us take part in the restoration. 



How France's Forests Have Increased 



Population 



By Gilbert Brown, Royal Scottish Arboricultural Society. 



I have been for fourteen months 

 in France in connection with the 

 exploitation of French forests for the 

 production of timber for the armies. 

 My appointment by the W^ar Office 

 was as liaison officer with both the 

 French militaiy and forestry- authori- 

 ties, and I had singular opportuni- 

 ties of seeing something of the great 

 part played by forestry in French 

 national life. My duties took me 

 to the sjilendid virgin forests of silver 

 fir and spruce in the Jura, to the 

 great State and privately-owned oak 

 and beech forests of Normandy and 

 the middle of France, and — perhaps 

 more interesting than any other 

 forest area — to the Departments of 

 Landes, Gironde and Basses Pyrenees 

 in the south-west corner of France. 

 During the last 100 years this coun- 

 try has been converted from a 

 barrefi waste of utterly unprofitable 

 land to a huge forest of over two 

 millions of acres, all under crops of 

 maritime pine of varying ages. Had 

 it not been for the foresight of the 

 French authorities, and perhaps of 

 Napoleon III. in particular, the ar- 

 mies and railways to-day in France 

 and our Admiralty collieries in South 

 Wales would have been in much 

 dire need of timber than they actu- 

 ally are. 



This south-western area of France, 

 which is now so enormously pro- 



ductive of useful timber, supports 

 in its villages and small towns a 

 thriving population, said to be more 

 prosperous than any in France; they 

 owe that prosperity entirely to the 

 products of the forest. Certainly 

 resin plays no inconsiderable part 

 in this increment of wealth, but in 

 spite of the distance from coal- 

 fields, great sums of money pour into 

 the country annually from the tens 

 of thousands of tons of pit-wood 

 shipped away, and the hundreds of 

 thousands of sleepers produced by 

 the excellent moveable band saw- 

 mills scattered up and down the 

 length and breadth of the three 

 departments. You cannot go 

 through that country without pic- 

 turing to yourself what a lonely 

 wilderness of heath and peaty marsh- 

 land it would have been had its 

 general afforestation not been taken 

 in hand. There is no brighter pros- 

 pect that alTorestalion in Scotland 

 has to offer than the thought that 

 in years to come we, or at any rate 

 our children, may see a great rural 

 population springing up among our 

 valleys in prosperous and sheltered 

 small-holdings, wiih ample occupa- 

 tion for their families and work for 

 their horses; the hillsides around 

 them clothed with thriving young 

 timber up to tree-growing limits 

 of altitude. 



