CANADIAN FORESTRY ASSOCIATION 77 



the majority of the trees of Nature's growing which the lumberman cuts 

 have required 150 years and more to make log sizes.* 



Last summer, I made the statement to a Nova Scotia lumberman that 

 a hundred-year-old spruce would be a 12-inch spruce. I was taken to task 

 for my ignorance, because the red spruce exists only in the United States, 

 and because of the remarkable climate of Nova Scotia, which is said to pro- 

 duce a tree in thirty years that would require a hundred in the United States. 

 Fortunately we were in the neighbourhood of a pulp mill, and I said, "It 

 is not necessary for me to make any statement about it,* here are the sticks 

 lying around; just count the rings and measure them." Soon he came to me 

 and said, "It takes 150 years to make a 12-inch spruce," and I replied that 

 I had said a hundred years because I did not want to let him down too hard. 

 (Laughter.) 



This long time element is the strongest argument not only for the govern- 

 ments retaining and managing forests as crops, but for the need of timely 

 consideration of the future. Such considerations of the future, as we shall 

 see, would involve the breaking away from the license system hitherto in 

 vogue, and this, indeed, is involved in our desire to see the government 

 change its attitude. 



We want, then, the governments to realize that there are other ways of 

 utilizing forest properties than merely exploiting them; that a rational, 

 properly directed,) technical management is capable of securing 'all the 

 value without destroying the capacity for further production, in other words, 

 that forests can be managed as crops to be reproduced while the utilization 

 is going on. More than that : poor forests of Nature can be improved and 

 made to produce more valuable material than the untouched natural woods. 

 Nature is not, as some bigoted nature worshippers would make us believe, 

 the best forester, for in Nature's production the economic thought is left 

 out. She produces weeds as readily as valuable kinds, she is lavish in space 

 and time, wasteful and without regard of human needs. 



No such simple provision as setting a diameter limit in cutting the tim- 

 ber limits will suffice to secure the needed supplies for the future. While 

 such a diameter limit may under certain conditions save at least a part of 

 the value and make future recuperation easier in the end, only a real forest 

 management the application of forestry by educated foresters will satisfy 

 the situation. And let it be well understood that forestry is not tree-plant- 

 ing, but begins best when the first tree is cut. 



Next we want the governments of the Provinces, especially the Eastern 

 ones, to realize that not less than two-thirds of their territory and most 

 likely more, is not fit for agriculture and only fit to grow timber. Hence, 

 there should be a more careful distinction made in the treatment of the 

 two situations. As long as rich agricultural soils in bulk were avail- 

 able, and the location of farms progressed by natural selection on the 

 glacial drift and alluvial soils, there was no need of any special con- 



*The growth of trees is exceedingly variable, according to species and growth 

 conditions. The careful measurements of several thousand White Pines, the most rapid 

 growing conifer in our woods, show that it takes, in favourable sites, in the average not 

 less than sixty years to make a twelve-inch tree, and under the most favourable 

 growth conditions, it would not be over twenty-four inches in the one hundredth year. 

 The Spruce, a much slower grower, makes under most favourable forest conditions one 

 inch in seven, more frequently one in nine years, which would bring a twelve-inch tree 

 in the average to one hundred years. But in the virgin forest where competition among 

 species and individuals retards the development, one inch in twelve to fifteen years and 

 more is the more usual rate of growth. 



