RURAL PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT 25 



(9) The economic conditions were associated with a certain 

 amount of social degeneracy, and the low moral tone and mental 

 defects of some communities were traceable to the unsound economic 

 conditions. 



(10) The amount of human energy unavaiiingly expended in 

 this attempt to settle land unsuitable for agriculture represents an 

 incalculable asset lost to the province. 



Two significant quotations are given in the report, from reports 

 made in 1855 and 1865, which show that the settlement of unsuit- 

 able areas was carried out in spite of advice giving warning of its 

 dangers. The Hon. A. T. Gait, chairman of a Committee of the 

 Legislative Assembly, e.g., reported, in 1855, as follows: 



"It appears from the evidence that settlement has been unrea- 

 sonably forced in some localities quite unfit to become the permanent 

 residence of an agricultural population . . . Your committee would 

 refer to the evidence, and recommend that the Government should 

 in all cases ascertain positively the character of the country before 

 throwing open any tract of land for settlement." 



Supplementing the inquiry into the conditions of the Trent 

 Watershed, Dr. C. D. Howe also made a more detailed investiga- 

 tion of the townships of Burleigh and Methuen, Peterborough county, 

 in 1913. In this report* he advocated a classification and segregation 

 of the lands which were capable of agricultural use from those which 

 should be forever given over for timber. Much of the land was 

 too poor for successful farming, but other areas were fertile. At 

 least one quarter was composed of marshes and swamps suitable for 

 growing hay and raising cattle — and, if drained, for conversion into 

 market gardens. He claimed that the soil of the marshes was so 

 rich that 10 acres devoted to garden crops could support a family, 

 and there were 15,000 acres which might eventually be used for 

 this purpose in Methuen alone. Co-operative methods of distri- 

 bution would however be necessary, as well as large expenditure in 

 drainage and improvement schemes to make such holdings success- 

 ful. 



The conditions prevailing in parts of Grenville and in the Trent 

 watershed show us that what we have to deplore in certain districts 

 is not that people are leaving the land but that they have been per- 

 mitted to go on the land under such circumstances. When millions 

 of acres of fertile land are lying uncultivated in Ontario 

 and many more millions in the Dominion — many thou- 

 sands of these acres being in the suburbs of our cities and near 



Forest Protection in Canada, page 205-200. 



