CANADIAN FORESTRY ASSOCIATION 111 



Not as wise as they think themselves, perhaps, are these politicians, because both 

 the voting public and financiers have little use for wasters of national resources. 

 The financial man shows his disapproval quickly; the voter can be hood-winked 

 for a longer time, but not forever. H. B. Whipple, State Commissioner of Forest, 

 Fish and Game, in an address before the New York Legislature, puts the picture o.f 

 what may be, of what might befall, in Canada, as well as New York, in these words: 



"If to-night, through some destructive power in nature, every tree and shrub 

 in the State of New York should be swept from the face of the State, what would 

 be the condition to-morrow? It requires no great strength of the imagination to 

 instantly comprehend the dire result. The home and breeding place of every bird 

 would be destroyed. The home and breeding place of every game animal would 

 be destroyed. Not only the source of every stream, but the whole glittering 

 ground and bed, would be uncovered of its forest growth. The humus underneath 

 the trees as it exists to-day would be destroyed. Every obstruction and hindrance 

 to the rapid flow of the water, as it falls from the clouds, or melts from snow, would 

 be swept away. In flood time there would be raging, destructive torrents, strew- 

 ing the wreckage of destroyed property, bridges, and buildings, along the flats. 

 The water would soon recede and run away, and the springs, rivulets, creeks and 

 rivers would be dry. Property throughout the State would be decreased in value 

 to-morrow morning fifty per cent. The meadows and pastures would dry out next 

 season, at the time when, conditions being properly balanced, they should afford 

 splendid hay crops and fine pastures. The total amount of milk, cream, butter, 

 and cheese produced in the State would shrink fifty per cent. In fact, the injury 

 would be so great to the State, that the people of this splendid commonwealth 

 would be appalled, and all because of the destruction of the woodlands of the 

 State. 



" Can it be said that this is too vivid a picture of what would follow. Is this 

 not as true, and would it not as surely happen, as it is true that, by the revolution 

 of the earth, if it is a clear day, we will see the sun to-morrow. And yet this very 

 thing is more than gradually transpiring every day." 



I have seen this dire result in other countries, and I have already seen it, on 

 a small scale, in many sections of Quebec. Only a short time, under foreign owner- 

 ship of our timber, is all that is necessary to see it happen on a very much larger 

 and more disastrous scale. 



Who is the sportsman to whom I refer? He is not necessarily a man who 

 kills game. Sports of canoeing, racing, portaging, snow shoeing. Many old 

 sportsmen are now quite content to hunt game with the camera, and are helping 

 to preserve it, so that they and their children may have the pleasure of seeing it in the 

 woods. He is the man who would like to see Canadian pulpwood manufactured 

 within the borders of his country, and all the lumber cut in the country manufac- 

 tured at home. He is the man who would like to see the cutting 

 confined to the annual crop of ripe timber, and any infringement of this 

 regulation most vigorously punished. Within the last twelve months, timber has 

 been sold on some of our most beautiful waters, near steamboat channels, without 

 restriction as to size, and logs four inches thick at the butt have been cut, legally, 

 within this short time. This means an alarmingly large amount of tree tops scat-' 

 tered along the surface of the ground, with the almost certainty of fires resulting, 

 which, owing to their fierceness, are likely to burn all the surface soil away and 

 leave the country a desert such a desert as Dr. Roth showed us last night in 

 many parts of the United Stages. 



