CANADIAN FORESTRY ASSOCIATION 15 



M. Lefebvre that is his name engaged Indians, little children, young people, 

 to go to the distant woods and bring each one a little sapling, for there are immense 

 pine woods in this country, to bring a little sapling for which he gave them two sous 

 or five sous; it was a means of making these children and these young people work. 

 All went to work, they hunted from morning till evening for these little saplings, 

 not more than a foot in height; and do you know how many tiny pine saplings M. 

 Lefebvre succeeded in planting on these sands? 65,000 pines. 



When one visits this forest now for the pines have grown, and there are 

 some of twenty and of twenty-five feet when one visits this forest one asks why 

 M. Lefebvre has done it thus. He has planted the trees three or four feet apart; 

 one would say, that is too close. A man of science would have said this : Do not 

 plant your trees so near to each other, they will injure each other and perhaps die; 

 do not plant them in a straight line. He did plant his pines in a straight line, 

 and, as I have said, at very small distances apart. Why? See, gentlemen, this is 

 sand. Is the forest going to succeed here? asked M. Lefebvre. I have my doubts; 

 a certain number of pines may live, others will die. Well, I shall plant my pines 

 very close to each other so that if some die, a large number at least may remain 

 which may contribute to produce the appearance of a forest. He planted them in 

 a straight line one might speak to-day truly of an army of gigantic soldiers 

 because if he had planted the trees here and there, without order, the Indians, the 

 savages, the children and above all the animals who went there would have des- 

 troyed those little pines; but if they were all in a straight line and formed avenues, 

 one would respect the trees, and even the animals themselves, which have no reason 

 but which have instinct, would follow the avenue. 



Thus reasoned this old priest, who was no scientist. Well, gentlemen, he suc- 

 ceeded beyond measure ; hardly five thousand pines have died out of the sixty-five 

 thousand that he planted and to-day there is a forest with its poetry, with its 

 incomparable charm. I know it and I love it, and it is there that each year, when 

 I have leisure, I go to pass some days of my vacation; and after having read some 

 books or recited our prayers on the borders of the lake, we go into this forest, where 

 silence reigns completely, to rest ourselves on a veritable soft carpet formed of millions 

 and millions of needles fallen from the pines which have' become large. There is 

 an odor of balsam there which strengthens you, and doctors might well send there 

 those who suffer from lung diseases; and then, when the wind goes through these 

 trees, there is the song, the incomparable song, which moves you, which transports 

 you the song of the great pines. 



This is what a priest has done. He has not merely preserved a forest, he has 

 created a forest. And, now, gentlemen, I ask whether this man has not deserved 

 to be put on record, and whether it would not be fitting that your Society itself 

 should erect a tablet commemorating a work so important and so beautiful as that 

 which has been accomplished by M. Lefebvre. 



