24 NEW BRUNSWICK FORESTRY CONVENTION 



north western plains. The old creeks and booklets have disappeared and 1 

 t?ater famines are not infrequent. 



How different would be the appearance of our rural sections today if 

 our fathers had left here and there a few acres of their choicest woodland, 

 and also along the roadsides an avenue of forest trees, but they cut them all 

 down and are now planting email ones which it will take a century to equal 

 those destroyed. 



How applicable to our case are the lines of the gifted poet of the- 

 Sierras when he says : 



"God gave us mother earth full blest 



With robes of green in healthful fold. 

 We tore tha green robes from her breast, 



We sold our mother's robes for gold. 

 We sold her garments fair, and she 



Lies shamed and bleeding at our feet. 

 In penitence we plant a tree, 



We plant a tree and count it meet." 



Captain Eads, the eminent American engineer, made a remark a fevr 

 years ago when he was engaged in building dykes along the lower Missis- 

 sippi and a jetty at its mouth, which has a world of meaning in it. He said 

 he was working at the wrong end of the stream ; and it was perhaps more 

 than sentiment that lead the Boston philosopher, Thoreau, to exclaim as he 

 witnessed the destruction of the forest on- his New England hills, "Thank 

 God, they cannot cut down the clouds. n 



But it is useless to recall lost opportunities except as an incentive to 

 1'uture action to reclaim as far as possible what has been lost, and the ques- 

 tion is, to use a street expression, "What are we going to do about it ? 



I am glad to observe that New Brunswick has recently taken very 

 decided action, as is shown in the Act of last Session, dealing with this 

 problem, and so far as I am able to Judge, the Act is one that if carried out 

 will be attended with excellent results and will be commended by future 

 generations if not by those now living. There is just one provision that I 

 would suggest which perhaps might be added, and it is this, that in any 

 future patents of timbered land a proviso should be inserted that at least 



of the area conveyed should be left in forest ; that the timber growing 



