Canadian Forcstrij Journal, October, VJll 1319 



The Case For New Brunswick's Forests 



Continued from Page 1339 



the value of wood and its manufactures. The share taken by the public treasurij 

 is no less than $5,000,000 a year. 



WHAT THE TREE DOES FOR THE PROVINCE 



One does not need, however, to cross the oceans to learn what forests 

 accomplish for the enrichment of a people. In a twelve month the sum of 

 $15,000,000 is distributed in New Brunswick from lumber and pulp products. 

 Another million dollars worth of wood is used by settlers for fuel and building 

 materials. The Government of New Brunswick gains over $500,000 a year 

 from various Crown timber taxes to ease the burden that must otherwise 

 be placed on the pubhc for administration expenses. This sum will be 

 materially increased as the result of recent re-adjustments of the dues on 

 Crown timber. The forests of the province are producing wealth each year 

 within about four million dollars of the whole value of agricultural production, 



ONLY UNTILLABLE SOIL IS NEEDED 



The timberman asks only non-agricultural soil for his wood crop and 

 every million dollars brought to the province by timber means an increased 

 demand for everything the farmer has to sell. One cannot emphasize too 

 strongly that more than seventy per cent, of the land area of New Brunswick 

 will never pay a profit to the plow. From the wood crops of that seventy 

 per cent, the province must take its chief share of future prosperity. 



Contrary to a prevalent impression, forests, under modern lumbering 

 conditions and with free access to fire, do not perpetuate themselves, except 

 in part and that very unsatisfactorily and with extreme slowness. Nature 

 unconlro'led is usually wasteful in her methods. Each decade has found the 

 forest possessions of New Brunswick and other parts of Canada substantially 

 weaker. Logged-over tracts are too often preyed upon by fire, and, even with 

 fire kept out, the logging methods now in vogue encourage the growth of 

 inferior species. As an illustration of this condition, white pine, the most 

 valuable of Canadian timber trees, has been almost obhterated from New 

 Brunswick's lumbering industry, although in the year 1825 no less than 

 400,000 tons of white pine were exported from New Brunswick to England. 

 Once the standard species in New Brunswick, it represents today not more 

 than five or six per cent, of the total lumber cut of the province. Hemlock, 

 little valued yesterday, except for bark, now commands $8.00 to $10.00 per 

 thousand board feet rafted at the booms. Spruce, now heading the market for 

 saw timber and for paper making was regarded almost a weed tree within the 

 experience of lumber operators now living, and has so advanced in value as to 

 bring in 1917, $13.00 to $20.00 a thousand board feet wholesale, and $9.00 to 

 $12.00 per cord F.O.B. for settlers' pulp wood. The spruce log is the standard 

 in New Brunswick woods operations, the commercial timbers ranging in this 

 order: Spruce, Fir, Cedar, Hemlock, Pine, Birch, Beech, Maple. 



THE NEW WORLD VALUES OF MARITIME FORESTS 



Thus, within the past ten years or less a new and increased valuation 

 has been placed by the markets of the world on the forest assets of New Bruns- 

 wick. The relatively slight value of a birch stand to-day is no more a guage 

 necessarily of what it will be to-morrow than was true of the early price of 

 spruce and hemlock. So with every other tree species now within the pro- 

 vincial boundaries. The world's wood consumption is increasing enormously. 

 The discovery of new methods of utilising what are now nearly useless woods. 



