CANADIAN FORESTRY ASSOCIATION 99 



If you want to study the effects of denudation in your own country, visit the 

 Sudbury or the Muskoka districts and you will see how a rock desert is started. 



As yet, only here and there noticeable, soon the repetition of fires and they 

 repeat themselves easily on ground once burnt will produce results such as 

 are described by Prof. Roth from Wisconsin ; a close neighbour in some respects not 

 unsimilar to your conditions. A careful inspection from town to town made ten 

 years ago brought out the information that of the eight million acres of cut over land 

 one half is as nearly desert as it can become in the climate of Wisconsin. A desert 

 of four million acres made by man in less than fifty years. 



It will take hundreds of years before this and areas similarly conditioned can be 

 made useful again. Contemplate what a loss to the commonwealth, what a hind- 

 rance to civilization within the State, such foolish and unnecessary mismanagement 

 of natural resources brings in its train ! 



But while the loss of the soil calls for active interference with the destructive 

 tendencies of our present generation, this is not the end of the disaster. 



As I stated at the outset, water conditions and soil conditions are so intimately 

 interwoven that the deterioration of the latter means invariably the deterioration 

 of the former. Again to quote from the report on Wisconsin: "The flow of all 

 rivers has changed during the last forty years; navigation has been abandoned on 

 the Wisconsin, logging and rafting has become more difficult on all rivers, and the 

 Fox River is failing to furnish the power which it formerly supplied in abundance." 







First comes the washing of the soil from higher to lower levels, and that 

 means ultimately into the riverbeds, filling them up with debris, then, as there is 

 nothing to retard the run off or to soak in and retain for gradual drainage the surplus 

 of r,ainfall, high arid low water stages, floods and drouths, in the rivers become 

 accentuated, and what was once a stream for the production of water power has 

 become a dangerous enemy to civilized life. 



You all have heard of the magnificent water powers which are to make Canada 

 a great industrial nation. Let your Hydro-Electric Commissions look out that the 

 conditions which are essential to the utilization of these powers are not destroyed 

 before, or perhaps still worse, after their development has been undertaken. 



Axe and fire, and especially the latter, are greater enemies of your prosperity 

 than monopolies of capital or labour. These latter can be controlled, but the re- 

 sults of the former, especially of repeated fires, become ultimately irremediable. 

 As the apostle St. John in his later life came to the conclusion that in the simple 

 prescription, " Love one another," was included all Christianity, so I have come to 

 the conclusion that in the injunction " Keep out the fire," is expressed the principal 



