CANADIAN FORESTRY ASSOCIATION 53 



that initial investment at four per cent, compound interest and figure it out, and 

 I am satisfied that from the standpoint of the state it is a good investment. 



Colonel WALTER J. RAY. I would like to say a few words in support of 

 what the last speakers have said on this subject. For the past thirty-eight years 

 I have been in the employ of a firm which holds 6,000 square miles of limits in 

 Quebec Province, in that firm two of my uncles were employed seventy-five years 

 ago, and I think if you will give us proper protection against timber thieves going 

 into the limits, I will take my chances on their destruction by fires, and have no 

 hesitation in saying that my children and my grand children may be working for 

 the same firm in a century yet to come. All we want is to be given a chance, and 

 we shall have plenty of timber. Reference has been made to the Lake St. John 

 district. I have been through there, and tramped all through the limits. I have 

 gone through vast areas there where for thirty miles at a stretch there is not a 

 living soul, where the country would not support a cariboo. Years ago this same 

 country was a splendid spruce forest, yielding an annual revenue, and it would be 

 so still and remain good for another century indeed, if protected against the timber 

 thieves who infest the country. 



Dr. ROBERT BELL. None of the previous speakers have even mentioned the 

 greatest cause of fire among standing timber, and that is lightning. In the northern 

 forests we all ' know that lightning is a frequent cause of fire during July and 

 August, when the coniferous woods are dry and prepared to take fire very easily. 

 The great point it seems to me is to improve the means of putting the fires out once 

 they start. Not only are they due to lightning, and the railways, but to the care- 

 lessness of travelers of all sorts, more especially travellers who are not Canadians, 

 who do not place any value upon the ppeservation of our timber and w r ho are too 

 ignorant or careless to bother to put their fires out. There are other causes of 

 fires, the Indians particularly have become very careless about them. In my 

 travels in the north during the last fifty years I have always made ita point where 

 I found many Indians, to preach them sermons about this. It seems to me quite 

 a revelation to them to think that we white men value the forests at all. They 

 said, that the dry timber was all they ever saw the white man use when they cut 

 it for their fires, so that they thought thev were doing no harm by causing forest 

 fires, and providing the white men with plenty of dry dead wood. 



It has been observed that these forest fires do not spread or run at night so 

 much as during the day. This is a good point to consider. If the fire rangers, who are 

 paid by the Government and the lumbermen to put out fires, would be active at 

 night they might do ten times as much work as during the day. Passing through 

 long stretches of navigable water, I have thought that in many instances perhaps 

 fire rangers might be provided with fire extinguishers which would reach fires near 

 the shores. The fires left by Indians, travellers and surveyors, etc., are generally 

 close to water, so that the forest fires they. cause generally start very close to the 



