6o2 



Garden and Forest. 



[December io, '1890. 



management of this colossal property. It has been truly 

 said tliat the real riches of a country are not in its deposits of 

 the precious metals, but in its forests, and yet, thanks to the 

 follv of the Government of the United States, these fruitful 

 sources of public wealth have been allowed to perish without 

 any thought beyond the morrow. 



Some idea of the enormous traffic which springs from forests 

 of the United States may be gathered, perhaps, from the fact 

 that in Chicago alone the 2,000,000,000 feet of wood and lum- 

 ber which are handled in that market represent i,ooocar-loads 

 for every working day in the year. If all the forest-products 

 of the United States were moved by rail, we should have a 

 train equal in length to eleven times the circle of the globe at 

 the point of its greatest diameter. The northern states alone 

 produce two-thirds of this lumber each year, or about 20,000,- 

 000,000 feet, worth three hundred millions of dollars. This 

 represents a weight of 500,000,000 tons, and would require a 

 fleet of 500,000 vessels, each of 1,000 tons burden, to transport 

 it — that is, a tonnage equal to twice the fleets of the entire 

 world. 



This forest-wealth of the United States has been so used and 

 abused that already the richest forests have disappeared. The 

 pine of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, once considered 

 inexhaustible, exist no longer. They have been exterminated; 

 and this is readily understood when it is remembered that a 

 single mill in this region has cut half a million feet a day, and 

 that the capacity of all the mills of the United States is more 

 than 60,000,000,000 feet a year. According to the Census re- 

 port, there were in 1880 55,175,000,000 feet of pine standing. 

 Since that time 45,475,000,000 have been cut, so that in all the 

 northern part of the United States there is now only two years' 

 supply of white pine of the best quality left, with more or less 

 pine of inferior quality. 



The improvidence of the Government, and the insatiate de- 

 sire to grow rich rapidly, have brought our neighbors' forests 

 into this condition. It seems almost incomprehensible that a 

 nation so intelligent and practical can allow itself to be de- 

 spoiled of one of the principal sources of national wealth while 

 it was so easy to render it perpetually productive. 



And what have we done ourselves here in Canada ? Have 

 we not committed the same blunders ? Has not our public 

 domain been pillaged also ? How many millions have been 

 sent from Canada during the last fifty years to enrich the peo- 

 ple of London ? Our Pine-forests have nearly disappeared. 

 The timber of which we were once so proud has vanished. 

 The pine, which is now found only between the Red River at 

 the west and Migen at the east, does not extend north of the 

 forty-ninth degree of latitude in the valley of the Ottawa and 

 the fifty-second degree in the region of Albany Lake. There 

 is none north of Lake Superior. Our best Pine-forests were 

 in the valleys of the Ottawa, of the San Maurice, of the Sagi- 

 naw and their tributaries. All these have been destroyed, and 

 now it is necessary to go 300 miles from Ottawa to the head- 

 waters of the San Maurice and to Lake St. John to find lum- 

 bermen at work. All that immense forest-territory of the 

 province of Quebec, of more than 100,000 square miles area, 

 would represent to-day hundreds of millions if the state had 

 managed it intelligently. But here, as in the United States, 

 every one supposed our forests were inexhaustible. They 

 have been cut without, pity and without rest. 



The Government was deaf to every appeal to protect the 

 public forests as longasafew hundred thousand dollars, derived 

 from the forest, was available to make up the deficit of the 

 general administration. The sale of limits made often to politi- 

 cal partisans, most often fraudulently and at prices absolutely 

 ridiculous, have almost entirely ruined our forests. Great 

 bodies of timber have been sacrificed at ridiculous prices in 

 time of panic when there was no demand for timber. In 1844 

 the Government, among other limits, sold one of 100 square 

 milesfor$4asquare mile — that is to say, atthe rateof twoacres 

 for one cent. Is it possible to imagine any greater folly in the 

 administration of Government affairs ? The results of these 

 wasteful methods are apparent. The cut of pine east of Mon- 

 treal, which amounted two years ago to 250,000,000 feet, has 

 now fallen to 25,000,000 — that is to say, to an annual output of 

 only ten per cent, of the former production — and this for the 

 excellent reason that there is no more pine to cut in that re- 

 gion. It is the price of the ruin of the forest-capital of the 

 province which the government of Quebec has received and 

 still receives every year. We have obtained as a gift from 

 our fathers a forest-domain unequaled in the world. It was 

 able every year to produce an enormous revenue, sufficient, 

 if properly administered, to meet all the expenses of the state. 

 And we have not been sufficiently intelligent to administer 

 this property in such a way as to perpetuate the revenue for 



our children. On the contrary, without regard to the most 

 elementary rules of forest-culture, we havealienatedtheforest- 

 domain by throwing it open to a crowd of greedy speculators 

 whose only other aim has been to destroy it entirely. Such 

 criminal conduct merits the contempt and reproof of the whole 

 world. The province of Quebec is not alone culpable. On- 

 tario, New Brunswick, Newfoundland are even worse off than 

 we are, and when the forest-resources of the Canadian con- 

 federation are examined, it is only too apparent that in a com- 

 paratively short time we shall be obliged to depend for 

 our timber upon other provinces. British Columbia, on the 

 Pacific side of the continent, is well wooded, but her forests 

 are too remote to be of practical value to us here in the east. 

 The timber supply of British Columbia will be needed by her 

 own people and by those of the north-west. Her timber can 

 be sent to Australia, California and South America more ad- 

 vantageously than to us here. From the Rocky Mountains to 

 Lake Superior timber is scarce. It is disappearing rapidly in 

 Ontario ; and in the maritime provinces and in all the eastern 

 counties consumption is increasing and the supply is disap- 

 pearing very rapidly. 



It is evident, then, that the province of Quebec must adopt 

 at once the methods which are everywhere recognized as 

 necessary to stop this destruction and assure by means of an 

 intelligent administration the perpetuity of whatremains of our 

 forest-domain. It is necessary, in a word, to inaugurate here a 

 system of regular cutting such as is practiced in France, Ger- 

 many and other civilized countries, where not only the an- 

 nual output is preserved, but the extent and value of the 

 forests are steadily increased. The government of Que- 

 bec should, in order to preserve its forest-domain and in- 

 crease for all time its productive capacity, adopt the following 

 plan : 



First. It should divide the public domain into five great for- 

 est-regions — namely, Ottawa, San Maurice, Saginaw, the coun- 

 ties of the east and the Gaspasie — and place each under the 

 direction of a general forest-officer. Each of these forest- 

 officers should then divide his region into as many forests as 

 there are distinct regions, each composing a certain number 

 of limits. 



Each forest should be worked, under the direction of a 

 forest-officer of the region, by a timber-merchant, owner of a 

 saw-mill, and such a forest should be cut once in every twenty 

 years or more, according to the nature of the soil and the trees 

 which are found in it. In this way every year a twentieth part 

 only of the forest would be worked ; the remaining ninety- 

 five per cent, will be left to its natural growth and protected 

 against all inroads from the lumberman or his employees. 

 By cutting each year trees only which have arrived at their full 

 value, those preserved would be ready for the axe twenty years 

 after. In this way a forest will perpetuate itself indefinitely, 

 yielding constantly an equal and regular annual product without 

 deterioration. 



Second. Every year the Government should determine what 

 will be the amount of timber called for by the needs of com- 

 merce in order to avoid the over-stocking of the market and 

 the commercial disasters which result from over-production 

 and the consequent shrinking in value of forest-products. 



Third. As is well known, the squaring of timber in the 

 woods, by which the soil is covered with chips, is an imminent 

 cause of fire, and a third of the wood moreover is lost by this 

 means. The Government should demand that all trees should 

 be sawed, not hewn, or floated down the streams in convenient 

 lengths to points of shipment. 



Fourth. The Government should exercise an intelligent in- 

 spection over the operations of lumbermen, and it should be 

 the duty of the general forest-guards of each region to mark 

 themselves, or to have marked by their assistants, all trees to 

 be cut or to be reserved in the annual cutting. 



Fifth. The Government should send to the Forest-School 

 at Nancy a certain number of young men who, havingfollowed 

 the course there in forest-studies, would be fitted later to assume 

 the direction of our woods and forests. 



Sixth. As the management of our woods and forests belongs 

 to the department of the Minister of Agriculture, the general 

 forest-guards should be placed under the direction of that 

 officer in all matters relating to the valuation and exploi- 

 tation of the forest-domain. 



It will perhaps be argued that these indispensable forms will 

 entail serious expenses on the Government. This is a mistake. 

 It is simply a redistribution of duties and a transfer of the 

 Government employees, which is necessary in order to put 

 this system in operation. 



And after all, a forest-domain of 50,000 square miles is well 

 worth the trouble and expense of some attention. It produces 





