54 CANADIAN FOEE STEY ASSOCIATION. 



even though many might suffer meanwhile, we might call it wise legislation, 

 but should their dreams fail to materialize, then an almost irreparable 

 injury will have been caused at all events an injury that will require many 

 years to remedy. 



I will endeavor to describe, as best I am able, the actual conditions pre- 

 vailing in the lumber producing districts of this Province, earnestly hoping 

 that a candid statement of facts will help somewhat in arriving at a correct 

 solution of the troublesome problem. In round numbers, if I am correctly 

 informed, there are left in the Province some seven and one-half million 

 acres of Crown timber lands, so called. In addition there are some four 

 and one-half million acres of fee lands, or lands in which the title is vested 

 in individuals. Not all of this territory produces lumber, however. Fires 

 have utterly destroyed large areas, while lakes, bogs, barrens and hardwood 

 ridges occupy considerable territory, so that it would seem that an estimate 

 of eight million acres actually growing spruce, fir and pine in considerable 

 quantities would be a fair estimate. Upon this territory I will venture an 

 estimate of the stand of black growth, and while I make no claim to extreme 

 accuracy, the figures are not wholy obtained by guess, but rather by com- 

 parison with other territory w r here careful estimates have been made. These 

 figures I shall try to make very conservative, which will allow for more qr 

 less destruction in the vicinity of settlers' lots, and for errors in calculations. 

 For all sizes of black growth, from the largest down to the smallest, we can 

 calculate in feet. I will name the figures as 1,750 superficial feet per acre, 

 or a total stand of fourteen billion feet on the timber land territory of this 

 Province. 



It is a well known fact that the increase in volume of lumber on virgin 

 or uncut timber lands is virtually nothing, because the older lumber is de- 

 caying practically in the same ratio as the younger trees are growing. This 

 must be true or otherwise we should find only impenetrable thickets of large 

 trees in such timber producing territory as the axe has never reached. On 

 cut-over territory it has been learned by careful measurements and tests 

 made by forestry experts, that the increase in volume is about three per 

 cent, annually on an average. If, then, the estimate or total stand is approx- 

 imately correct, it will be safe to reckon that if the forest territory had all 

 been cut over, it would safe (barring fires and following fairly conserva- 

 tive methods of lumbering) to cut 420 million feet annually, providing 

 the whole of the trees destroyed were taken, as this would simply be the 

 annual increase. 



As a matter of fact, however, the saw mills have cut only about 75 per 

 cent, of this territory, and as the balance is non-producing, the actual in- 

 crease is only 315 million, or 2% per cent, on the total stand. The reason 

 for the saw mills not operating on the whole ground, is not because the ter- 

 ritory has not been covered or exploited, but because there is about 25 per 

 cent, of the territory that never has produced t log of size suitable for saw 

 mill use. The ground to which I refer is the high land or low land "thicket" 

 and the semi-barren land, so called. Such territory would produce in many 

 instances ten, twenty, and even thirty cords per acre, equivalent to one- 

 half as many thousands of feet, and yet unless such land is allowed to be cut 



