934 



Canadian Forestry Journal, January, 1917 



selves with large areas of our timber 

 lands. The pulp and paper industry 

 has grown by leaps and bounds and 

 with the increasing uses to which 

 wood pulp is put and the growing 

 demand for it, we should take careful 

 stock of our resources and utilize them 

 wisely and with an eye to the future. 

 A puip or paper mill can not be taken 

 down like a portable saw-mill and 

 moved from one place to another as 

 the supply of timber is exhausted, 

 millions of capital are invested and 

 only by long term operation can it 

 be made to pay. 



I do not wish to be taken for an 

 alarmist and I am far from pessimistic 

 but I do think it is time for us to 

 stop guessing about the amount of 

 timber we have, and to face the facts, 

 make a careful inventory and utilize 

 our forests intelligently. My own 

 conclusions are based on facts, care- 

 fully ascertained. 



Why Costs Increase. 

 The question of accessibility of 

 wood supplies plays an important 

 role in the cost of raw material, in the 

 case of wood, the extra expense of 

 taking men into the woods long dis- 

 tances, of transporting provisions 

 first by rail then by sleighs and the 

 long drives on the rivers all add to 

 the cost per ton of paper. This diffi- 

 culty has been aggravated by our 

 methods of logging. At first all the 

 timber was cut off around the lakes 

 and along the rivers for say a half a 

 mile and this was gradually extended 

 until the haul became too long to be 

 economically possible. Also timber 

 in difficult places was left. The usual 

 method of logging which is still in 

 force nearly everywhere in Quebec 

 is to let a contract in a predetermined 

 district to a jobber for a certain num- 

 ber of thousand logs. The number 

 of logs that can be cut is guessed at 

 and is finally settled by compromise 

 with the jobber. Usually there is 

 more than enough timber in the dis- 

 trict assigned him and he proceeds to 

 lay out his roads radiating from his 

 headquarters and to cut as close to 

 these roads as possible often leaving 

 quite large amounts of timber be- 

 tween them, which necessitates going 

 back to this same section again and 



as the timber left is the most difficult 

 to get out a higher price must be paid. 

 Unfortunately, until within the 

 last six years the river drivers in- 

 variably set fire to the slashings in 

 the spring and burnt off the timber, 

 so that one could not go back at all. 

 The course of practically every driv- 

 able stream is burnt and I estimate 

 that about 30 p. c. of the St. Maurice 

 Valley has been burnt over in the 

 last fifty years and about 16 p. c. 

 of this area has not yet commenced 

 to reproduce and the balance will not 

 produce a crop for many years. 



Composition of Forests. 

 The condition of the forests is a 

 matter about which the average man 

 does not have any very clear ideas. 

 In the first place we have very little 

 forest which is composed of just one 

 species. In swampy places we have 

 pure stands of black spruce, growing 

 thickly, hardly ever attaining a larger 

 size than ten inches and most of the 

 trees of great age owing to the un- 

 favorable conditions of growth. I 

 have often seen trees five inches in 

 diameter over one hundred years old. 

 Then on sandy plains we have dense 

 stands of jack pine which has usually 

 come up after a fire and which is so 

 crowded that the trees are very tall 

 and spindling and will never reach 

 commercial size. On large areas too, 

 over which fire has passed we have 

 stands of aspen and white birch 

 neither of which trees growing under 

 such conditions have much merchant- 

 able value as they seldom reach large 

 size, are generally diseased and com- 

 paratively short lived. Our really 

 good forests are composed generally 

 of balsam 61 p. c, white birch 17 

 p.c, white spruce 15 p.c, black 

 spruce 4 p.c, maple 2 p.c, cedar 

 .5 p.c, other hardwoods .45 p.c. and 

 white pine .05 p.c. Of this about 

 32 p.c of the total stand spruce and 

 balsam can be cut above the Gov- 

 ernment diameter limit. The way 

 the cutting has been carried on in 

 the past most of the white and black 

 spruce and some of the balsam has 

 been taken off. Where a good deal 

 of light has been let in and conditions 

 were otherwise favorable the balsam 

 has come up in dense groups in which 



