12 THE CANADIAN FORESTER'S 



would be insured. The woodmen, too, might be com- 

 pelled to free the land from boughs, chips, and other 

 wastage, which tend to increase the number of bush- 

 fires. Instead of the sad spectacle of sterile, devastated 

 districts, which now distresses us, we should look upon 

 many a fine forest, ready to furnish all kinds of wood to 

 our descendants. 



Next, the general fall of timber must be so regulated, 

 that all trees that do not exceed a certain size shall be 

 left standing. If, in addition, the law prohibits the 

 repetition of the fall more than once in ten years, these 

 limits, instead of being worn out, as they are at present, 

 by continued cutting, would be always fit for ex- 

 ploitation. The same precautions as to the removal of 

 the wastage will be necessary here as elsewhere. I will 

 epeak more in detail hereafter of the part this wastage 

 plays in causing bush-fires. 



The settler himself must be the special object of our 

 legislators' attention — as regarded from the forester's 

 standpoint, I mean. When engaged in clearing his farm, 

 the settler is the sworn enemy of the forest. In his blind 

 hatred, he wages direct war with it ; and, as he is the 

 stronger, his axe never pauses till the last tree is laid 

 low. A few years later, if his land does not turn out to 

 be of the best quality, he is forced to leave it, and to 

 seek a foreign soil ; unless he sets to work to clear, and 

 therefore to ruin, another part of his own country. To 

 put a stop to this evil, nothing would be easier than 

 for the government to oblige each settler to keep a 

 certain number of acres of his farm uncleared. At the 

 end of fifteen or twenty years, he would bless those 

 who had thus forced him to observe the injunctions of 

 prudence. The settled townships would then have all 

 the wood required by their inhabitants, and we should 



