12 COMMISSION OF CONSERVATION 



This statement, as intimated before, leaves out of consideration 

 the holdings of the Canada Land and Immigration Company in the 

 northern headwaters. This is a hiU country quite different in character 

 from the lower watersheds, being still largely covered by a virgin 

 forest of hardwood, either pure or mixed with spruce, pine and hem- 

 lock. This region has been only partly culled, and little or not at all 

 damaged by fire. 



The forest cover of the lower watershed, a round one million acres, 

 can be divided into four types, in addition to the barren country — 3 . 2 

 per cent — ^which was originally forest-covered, and that recently burned 

 over, nearly 2 per cent (22,000 acres), which may, or may not, recuper- 

 ate. The types of mature timber are pure hardwood, pure conifer 

 growth, and mixed hardwood and conifer, these being types of the 

 original forest. The fourth type is the result of forest fires; it is the 

 original pinery, now occupied by a young growth of poplar and birch, 

 pure or with more or less young pine intermixed. 



Less than 90,000 acres of mature timber remain in a condition 

 which can be called "moderately culled ;"* somewhat over 300,000 

 acres have been severely culledf ; some 20,000 acres are immature 

 timber of the original type ; and the balance, some 560,000 acres, is of 

 the poplar-birch type. This latter type represents not only the largest 

 area, 57.3 per cent of the whole forest and 42.2 per cent of tl\» whole 

 area, but is also the most important and most valuable for the future, 

 as it furnishes an opportunity for reproducing the pinery, which once 

 represented the chief asset of this territory. According to the severity 

 and frequency of the fires, more or less of pine regeneration is found 

 interspersed with the poplar and birch. 



The whole area has been burned over at least once. Including 

 the 37,000 acres which originally belonged to this type and are already 

 turned into barrens or semi-barrens, and 22,500 acres of recent bums 

 which will change into this tjrpe, we have 620,000 acres of these burned 

 areas, one-quarter of which has been so often burned that neither seed 

 trees nor yoxmg pine growth exist on it ; these 156,000 acres are there- 

 fore unable to recuperate by natural processes. Nearly two-thirds 

 of the area (389,000 acres) have been burned over two or three times 

 and are practically also beyond natural recuperation, with only six 

 young pines, on the average, to the acre. Only 75,000 acres, burned 

 once, promise, if fire is kept out, to recuperate naturally, with 30 young 



*i.e. still containing aawlogs of commercial value. 



t i.e. with no commercial timber and fit only for cordwood. 



