in the yard we were put on railway cars and taken to 

 a large city where in a woodworking factory I was 

 made into this door and brought to this school- 

 house, where I have a very honourable and useful 

 post. As long as I live I shall always be useful to 

 mankind and that is the true end of a tree." 



"But are you not a disappearing race?" asked the 

 Stove rather ungraciously. "Will not the farmer 

 soon be sowing wheat where the last remaining 

 forests now stand?" 



"No!" said the White Pine warmly, "a thousand 

 times no; two-thirds of Canada will never be ploughed 

 by farmers. It is not suitable for farming. The 

 soil is too sandy, or too hilly, or too rocky. If the 

 trees are burned off until no trees and no tree seeds 

 are left, that land will be a desert forever, like the 

 great deserts in China. But if the young trees are 

 protected from fire, when the old ones are cut down, 

 that part of Canada will go on producing the finest 

 kinds of trees, trees which the people of Canada 

 need, trees for which the people of the whole world 

 are holding out their hands." 



"Let us hear now from this tree that knows all 

 about mining," said the Stove rather tartly. At 

 this the White Spruce in the wainscot spoke up and 

 said : 



"I remember falling as a little seed one autumn day 

 on a certain hill, north of the prairie country. I will 

 not describe it more closely than that. I am not so 

 old as White Pine over there, because when the 

 axe-men came to cut me down I was just a little 

 more than one hundred years old. There was no 

 river or lake near us, so that when we were cut down 

 we were not drawn on to the ice to wait for spring, 



