582 



Canadian Forestry Journal. June. 1016. 



l^irch already spoken of, he men- 

 tioned among others the white 

 pine, the balsam hr, the tamarack, 

 the sugar maple, tht_^ black ash, 

 and the American elm. Several 

 of these, he said, produced valu- 

 able woods useful for a variety of 

 purposes. Forest fires w^ere the 

 cause of a loss to the Colonv esti- 

 mated at from £1.000,000 to £2,- 

 000.000 annually : they were very 

 largely due to sparks from railway 

 engines. Once an area was 

 cleared, reafforestation took from 

 thirty to fifty years. Jutting out 

 as it did into the Atlantic, New- 

 foundland was much nearer the 

 Mother Country than most people 

 realised. 



In the course of an interesting 

 discussion that followed, Sir \M1- 

 liam Macgregor, a recent governor 

 of Newfoundland, who presided, 

 said that in addition to the forest 

 reserves in the island itself, there 

 was a considerable area, perhaps 

 10,000 or 12,000 square miles, in the 

 southern part of Labrador. The 

 trees were practically all of the same 

 kind as in Newfoundland, and there 

 was not so much dift'erence in the 

 rate of growth as might be expected. 

 The Labrador forests did not suft"er 

 from fires to the same extent as did 

 those of Newfoundland, and one re- 

 sult of this was a much higher pro- 

 portion of coniferous trees ; for it 

 was found that a fire not only de- 

 stroyed the standing trees of these 

 species, but it destroyed the seeds 

 also, with the result that the first 

 growth after a fire Avas not of pine 

 or spruce, but of the les^ valuable 

 birch. He had read recentlv that a 

 spark arrester had been invented 

 which was efficient and cheap. The 

 difficulty in the past had been that 

 if the meshes of a spark arrester 

 were sufticently fine to stop sparks. 

 A'entilation was stopped also, and it 

 was very dil^cult to get up the heat 

 necessary to develop steam. As to 

 reafforestation, it was a melancholy 

 fact that the British peoples did not 

 anywhere seem to appreciate its im- 

 portance. 



Lord Ncirthclift'e said that very 

 few people had crossed the island in 

 more than one directio.n Had it 

 been in the hands of the Germans, 

 it would have been long ago ex- 

 ploited. 



Mr. Alfred Reed (of the Albert 

 Reed Company) said that in spite of 

 many good points, the native New- 

 foundlander had one defect — he was 

 extraordinarily deficient in any ap- 

 preciation of the value of standing 

 timber, and would cut down a large 

 tree to use a very small part of it, 

 although he could get what he 

 wanted from a much smaller tree not 

 far away. Another thing was that 

 it was very difticult to get them to 

 settle down to any kind of industrial 

 labor. The last time he was at the 

 mills he was told by the superinten- 

 dent that practically every man ex- 

 cept the foreman and leading hands 

 had worked, taken his leave, and 

 come back at least three times. 



English Forest Areas 



Many Canadians wdio have not 

 visited Great Britain suppose that 

 there is little woodland in the old 

 country, and it is natural to think 

 of the United Kingdom as cleared 

 of timber and cultivated like a gar- 

 den. 



In England and AVales, according 

 to a recent report of the forestry- 

 branches of the British Government, 

 there are nearly 2.000,000 acres of 

 forest, and large areas of unculti- 

 vated land on which it is the inten- 

 tion to cultivate a growth of timber. 

 There are, it is estimated, 2,500,000 

 acres of afforestable land in Eng- 

 land and A\'ales. 



Of course most of the British for- 

 ests are held for park and estate pur- 

 poses. The area of crown forests in 

 England and Whales is onl}^ 65.766 

 acres, made up mostly of the his- 

 torical estates of the crown. 



