CANADIAN FORESTRY ASSOCIATION 101 



The third step would be an equitable adjustment of rights and obligations 

 between Government and present license holders, with a view of preserving the 

 capital value of the limits and of remanding them in a reasonable time to the 

 Government's ownership and administration. 



This involves also an adjustment of the quarrel between the lumberman and 

 the settlers. While undoubtedly lumbermen have repeatedly taken advantage of 

 the opportunities for favouring themselves in handling their limits, they undoubt- 

 edly also have had grievances which came from loose methods in permitting settle- 

 ment within their limits. It is notorious that, as in the United States, pseudo- 

 settlers have again and again been permitted to locate within licensed lands with 

 no other object than to get hold of the timber, abandoning the location after they 

 have robbed it of the timber, or disposed of it to the licensee, and in other ways 

 having disturbed peaceful development. 



Even bona fide settlers ignorant enough and permitted to settle on poor lands 

 are a menace to the interests of the community, and are frequently the cause of 

 destructive forest fires. You may have noticed in the papers lately an account of 

 such a settler in Pontiac County, Quebec, in clearing for a five bushel potato patch, 

 destroying timber to the value of three million dollars, by allowing his fire to run 

 and the land is now a worthless desert. A careful revision of the conditions of 

 settlement which permit such baneful usage is urgently called for. 



That I may not appear as only criticizing and fault-finding, I shall add that 

 beginnings in developing these ideas practically have been made by the Dominion 

 Government in the West, and by the Province of Quebec. And only this week 

 the Government of Ontario has committed itself to all the propositions which'a 

 forester could reasonably demand, namely, increase of the protective service, ex- 

 tension of the reservation policy, equitable arrangements with the present license 

 holders, and disposal of timber henceforth under forestry rules. 



All these steps proposed are in the right direction, and all that is needed is to 

 fearlessly follow the trails and not to be afraid to spend money even for apparently 

 dead work, which will bring results, at compound interest, in the end as it has done 

 in other parts of the world. 



It goes without saying that to carry out such proposals will require the organi- 

 zation of properly manned departments, and we hope at the University of Toronto 

 that when the graduates of the new Faculty of Forestry are ready for responsible 

 work, these policies will have been inaugurated, as indeed, beginnings in that direc- 

 tion have already been made. 



And now I shall try in the remaining five minutes to make you complete fores- 

 ters, and give you seven axiomatic forestry tenets, which nobody can deny, one for 

 each day in the week. 



