CANADIAN FORESTRY ASSOCIATION 123 



of any size for lumbering in thirty or even sixty years. Most of the spruce that 

 is cut to-day I believe, is over one hundred and fifty years old. 



Dr. BELL. I have made six thousand cuts within the last few years, and the 

 majority of our full grown trees if .the fires have left any of them full grown, 

 there may be no full grown spruce but if there be any you will find few of them 

 more than 150 or even 120 years old. I have seen black spruce more than 150, 

 and tamarac even 200 years old, but not white spruce. 



Mr. ABRAHAM KNECHTEL. I have had some experience in finding out the ages 

 and heights and diameters of spruce. It is a very slow growing tree, at the begin- 

 ning, and as compared with white pine it is a slow growing tree all the way through. 

 In Europe the rotation for spruce is 120 years, while that for pine is only 100 years, 

 The white pine tree will grow to be about eight inches in diameter in twenty-five 

 years, if it grows under the most favourable circumstances. It will grow to eleven 

 inches in diameter in forty or fifty years. It will grow to be about fifteen inches in 

 diameter in from eighty to 100 years, all these of course under the most favourable 

 conditions. I would rather agree with Dr. Fernow from the results of my knowledge 

 and investigations, that a spruce tree will not be more than six inches in diameter 

 at thirty years of age. And that is the very time when you do not want to cut it, 

 because then it would be laying on timber faster than ever before, and the interest 

 accumulating on that tree value is just beginning to be at its very best, and that is 

 the time to leave it in the woods to keep oh growing. (Applause). 



Dr. BELL. I never saw a tree grow faster after it was eight or ten years old 

 than it did before.. The universal rule is that they grow faster early than after- 

 wards. It would be an anomaly to find after that time the rings further 

 apart than before; the contrary is always the case. Your spruces in the south 

 must grow slowly. In regard to every tree the best condition of growth is between 

 its northern and southern and its eastern and western extremes. Any coniferous 

 tree transplanted to the southern countries has a hard struggle to live at all. I 

 have seen the same thing in Germany, and have gone through great regions where 

 spruces struggle along thirty or forty years and do not grow any more. However, 

 I do not think this had anything to do with the matter I spoke of. 



Mr. KNECHTEL. In Germany and in Europe, where they have practised 

 Forestry for a very long time, they have learned to take trees from the forest 

 as soon as they cease to add sufficient interest to warrant leaving them in the forest. 

 Their practice is to leave the spruce until it is about 120 years old. 



Dr. BELL. I suppose it grows very slowly towards the close of its life. The 

 lines of its growth are so crowded together when it is nearly 100 years old, that 

 the increase is very little indeed, but of course it is always a little, and if it pleases 

 them in Germany to allow for half an inch growth in thirty or forty years that is 



