WOOD SUPPLY OF CANADA. 127 



1820, whilst for the last fifty years it has exceeded a million loads 

 annually. Whilst during the first half of the last century Canada 

 only exported wood to the United Kingdom and the West 

 Indies, for the last twenty years she has experienced a steadily 

 increasing demand from the United States, which now take about 

 half her annual export, or some 13 million dollars worth annually. 

 For many years past the Pine logs floated down to Ottawa have 

 numbered nearly four million a year ; and now the demand for 

 paper-pulp has given the Spruce, owing to the far greater area of 

 its distribution, a value in the aggregate much greater than that 

 of the Pines. 



In addition to the southern forest belt, now so largely cleared 

 or depleted in the eastern half, there is the great northern forest 

 which stretches from the Straits of Belle-Isle round by the 

 southern end of James Bay to Alaska, a distance of about 4000 

 miles, with a breadth of some 700 miles. "This vast forest," 

 says Dr. Robert Bell of the Canadian Geological Survey, "has 

 everywhere the same characteristics. The tree, as a rule, are 

 not large, and they consist essentially of the following nine 

 species : Black and White Spruce, Banksian Pine, Larch, Balsam 

 Fir, Aspen, Balsam Poplar, Canoe Birch, Bird-Cherry, White 

 Cedar, White and Red Pine : Black Ash and Rowan occur spar- 

 ingly in the southern part of this belt." 



With nearly 38 per cent, of the whole area of the Dominion 

 under forest, Canadians have in the past given little heed to 

 conservation, believing in the power of natural reproduction to 

 balance the forces of destruction, a belief which, when not sub- 

 stantiated by careful statistical investigation, is a dangerous fool's 

 paradise. 



Conclusions. A most valuable practical test of the increased 

 consumption and the growing scarcity of timber is the advance in 

 prices. It has been estimated that in Germany from about 1550 

 to 1750 wood quadrupled in price, from 1750 to 1830 the progres- 

 sive increase of price was at the same rate, but from 1830 to 1880 

 the rate was much higher, reaching in some cases 300 per cent, 

 within the half century. What was worth 100 francs in 1840 



