TWELFTH ORDINARY MEETING. , 111 



rainfall, and to have become fertile again. (Mr. Phipps gave many 

 instancea from the history of different lands — Spain, France, Germany, 

 Palestine, India, and others bearing on this point.) The operations 

 of nature, he said, are chiefly hidden from our view. We see the tree 

 grow and the field yield its increase, but the actual accretion^ particle 

 by particle, so that the buds sprang forth, the leaves appeared, the 

 blossom and the fruit followed in due season, is not within our sight. 

 But we know that the sun gave its warming beams ; that the moisture 

 continually rose from the earth at its call, and fell again in rain, and 

 rose and fell again. And we know that when alternate heat has 

 dried the land, and alternate shower has given its waters, till trunk 

 and branches drip, and the roadside ditch is a flowing river, that then 

 leaf and bud and blossom glow and swell with a newer beauty, that 

 the great leaves of the cornfield broaden with a more vivid green, 

 that the waving wheat receives growing impetus and overtops the 

 rustic fence, and every embowering grove sends out a fi-esher frag- 

 rance upon the summer air. It is the enriching influence of the 

 circulation of heat and moisture — it is with this we interfere when 

 we deforest the land. In Ontario, in many parts, we have cleared 

 all but ten per cent, and even this small amount is not remaining. 

 How to pi'eserve and increase it is the chief question for Ontario 

 to-day, for on that alone depends whether her farms shall remain 

 fertile or become barren. In the rest of the address, which was en- 

 tirely impromptu, and of which this report is necessarily but a 

 synopsis, Mr. Phipps narrated many interesting facts concerning the 

 influence of deforesting on agriculture in Ontario; and stated that, 

 in the older settled parts, there were but three ways of proceeding. 

 By windbreak, by plantation, and by preserving whatever portions 

 of forest yet stood, by excluding cattle, which last was the main 

 point. He gave the methods of proceeding in each case, and men- 

 tioned the trees suitable for each. He also sj)oke of the large pine 

 forests in the interior, the necessity of their preservation from fire, 

 described the burnt lands he had lately seen near the Ottawa, where 

 for a length of seventy miles, and a breath of twenty, in one place 

 alone, was nothing but dead trees, useless now, a pine forest worth 

 ■many millions a few years back, and mentioned that Quebec was 

 reserving great areas for forest alone, discouraging settlement where- 

 ever the pine forest should be preserved. He concluded by saying 

 that it was much move than a Provincial, it was more thaii a national, 

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