450 SECTIONAL TRANSACTIONS.—K. 
forestry is in its first stage of development. Thirty-five years ago we had no 
public forests recognised as such and organised for continuous production. 
To-day we have about 165 million acres of national, state, and communal forests. 
The present trend in acquiring additional public forests by the nation, state, 
and community, and the temper of the public toward taxation, indicate that this 
acreage will not increase rapidly enough or go far enough to solve our forestry 
problem. All absolute forest land in the United States must be intensively 
managed for continuous yield before the annual growth will even approach our 
present annual consumption. Nearly four-fifths of our entire forest area is still 
privately owned. The public appreciates the necessity for the practice of 
forestry or privately owned forest land, and the trend of public opinion is 
toward the solution ot this problem. One body of public opinion favours 
coercive measures, another favours co-operation. Recent tendencies indicate 
that the largest body of public opinion is toward co-operation and public 
assistance, which will make private forestry more attractive economically. This 
assistance centres in organised fire protection and tax adjustments. The past 
twenty-five years have seen a remarkable advance in forestry education and in 
forest research, both of which are of great importance in promoting private 
forestry, and already the view-point of private forest owners is changing toward 
sustained yield. Private forestry, what we as a nation do with our privately 
owned timber-land, is the only great forestry problem in the United States 
to-day. The establishment of processes for the efficient maragement of privately 
owned forest property and their orderly execution more than all else will 
determine our position in the future as a timber-producing country. 
(b) Dr. J. M. Swayze and Dr. J. M. Munro.—Forest Protection 
from Insects. 
Forest insect injuries in Canada have been responsible during the past 
fifteen years for enormous timber losses, amounting to hundreds of millions 
of dollars in value. The most important outbreaks in living timber have been 
caused by the following insects: The spruce budworm in Quebec and New 
Brunswick ; the western pine bark-beetles in yellow pine, white pine, and lodge- 
pole pine in British Columbia; the destructive spruce bark-beetle in white and 
red spruce in parts of Quebec, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan; the larch sawfly 
throughout Eastern Canada, extending as far west as Northern Alberta; and 
the white pine weevil in Eastern Canada. There have been many others but 
little less destructive. 
Control of extensive epidemics of forest insects can be effected by direct 
methods in the case of some outbreaks caused by bark-beetles and wood-borers ; 
but we have no satisfactory method, at present, of controlling defoliating insects 
in large forest areas. It is possible that the distribution of poisoned dusts from 
air machines may prove useful for this purpose in the future. 
The control of forest insects forms an important part of silviculture, and 
forest entomologists are wisely attempting the solution of their most difficult 
problems through full co-operation with the technical foresters and botanists. 
Jur forest insect injuries will be much less severe when North American forests 
come to be managed in accord with the principles of scientific forestry. The 
most serious problems in silviculture can be dealt with effectively only through 
a generous co-operation between technical and practical foresters, entomologists, 
botanists, and, often, investigators in other branches of Science. 
(c) Mr. D. Roy Cameron.—forest Fire Protection in Canada. 
1. Reference to situation in Canada as presented by author in paper before 
British Empire Forestry Conference, Ottawa, 1923. 
2. Résumé of work and report of Committee on Fire Protection at said 
Conference. 
3. Résumé of work and findings of Conference between Federal and Provincial 
Governments on forest fire protection held in Ottawa, January 1924. 
4. Definition of a proper forest policy for Canada, with particular reference 
to fire protection, in view of the above, under following headings :— 
(a) Fire prevention; (6) Land classification ; (c) Dedication; (d) Concentra- 
tion of protection; (e) Slash disposal; (f) Proper organisation for 
control. 
