122 CANADIAN FORESTRY ASSOCIATION 



maturity in thirty years and by cutting year after year over a certain area each 

 year, the whole country would not be cut over in thirty years, so that there would 

 be a continual renewal equal to the cut, so that the supply would be perpetual. 

 If it would last four hundred years it would last forever, because as a rule a spruce 

 tree only lives less than 150 years, so if we could keep them going thirty years we 

 would have an everlasting supply. Of course the element of transporting the 

 spruce wood had not been discussed, but the wood is there, and it is another matter 

 how to get it to the place where it is to be used. But one thing is sure that the 

 spruce forests would live and die four times over in four hundred years. 



Mr. LITTLE. Is not the bulk of this spruce country too far away to be of 

 any use to us here? 



Dr. BELL. The spruce forests extend four thousand miles in length and vary 

 from five to eight hundred miles in width. 



Mr. LITTLE. Yes, but most of them are very far west of this district and in 

 a practically inaccessible country. 



Dr. FERNOW. Upon what basis does Dr. Bell state that the spruce matures 

 in thirty years? 



Dr. BELL. I did not say so. It gets half its growth in that time. The case 

 of the spruce is very much like pigs in a packing house. When the pigs are a year 

 old and weigh two hundred pounds, it pays best to kill them rather than await the 

 slower growth of subsequent years. In the same way with the spruce trees, it is 

 better to cut them when they are thirty years old. 



Dr. FERNOW. How big would they be by sixty years? 







Dr. BELL. White spruce would be eighteen inches in diameter. 

 Dr. FERNOW. That must be in a southern climate. 



Dr. BELL. I think that white spruce growing in a moderate climate would 



attain a growth of eighteen inches diameter in thirty years. 



\ 



Dr. FERNOW. About four to five inches in thirty years, you mean. 



Dr. BELL. No, four to five inches in ten years. The greatest growth in a 

 tree is in the first four or five years. It is ten times more rapid then than after it 

 is thirty years old. 



Dr. FERNOW. That is not the case with us. I have hunted days to find 

 spruce three years old, which are almost invisible, and I think if you had investi- 

 gated the subject as I did you would agree with me that you could not get spruce 



