98 COMMISSION OF CONSERVATION 



aware of the necessity of segregating agricultuial from absolute forest 

 lands, and the setting aside of the latter as forest reserves. As early 

 as 1 8s s a committee of the House of Commons, Hon. A. T. Gait, Chair- 

 man, reported, among other things : "It appears from the evidence 

 that settlement has been unreasonably pushed in some localities quite 

 unfit to become the permanent residence of an agricultural population. 

 Especially has this been the case in some of the Free Grant roads and 

 adjacent country, lying between the waters of the Ottawa and Lake 

 Ontario. Your Committee would refer to the evidence and recommend 

 that the Government should, in all cases, ascertain positively the charac- 

 ter of the coimtry before throwing open any tract of land for settlement, 

 so that such lands that are really not fit for profitable cultivation 

 may not be thrown upon the market. There being considerable 

 diversity of opinion among the witnesses in regard to some of the 

 localities adverted to, it seems to the committee that the Government 

 should have an examination made by some thoroughly competent and 

 reliable officer, whose report would be available in any ftirther consider- 

 ation of this subject." 



Again, in 1865, the Hon. A. Campbell, Commissioner of Crown 

 Lands, in his report for that year, stated : "Though much of it (the 

 pine country) has been denuded of its valuable timber, it is the opinion 

 of the best informed, that a large area remains untouched ; happily 

 for the interests of the country, the pine ejdsts on lands for the most 

 part unfit for settlement. It needs a careful discrimination between 

 pine lands exclusively and lands fit for settlement, to place it in the 

 power of the Government to conserve this valuable soturce of national 

 wealth. Shotdd the whole of our uncultivatable land be set apart, 

 as I think should be done, as a pine region, and no sales made there, 

 the land would, if the trees were cut imder a system of rotation such as 

 is now adopted in Norway and Sweden and in many of the German 

 States, recuperate their growth of merchantable pine in cycles of 30 

 and 40 years; and pine growing might be continued and preserved for 

 ages to come. In view of the future requirements of this continent 

 and of Europe, and of the singular advantages Canada enjoys as a 

 pine-producing country, I humbly submit that it is of the utmost 

 importance that we should now take steps in this direction." 



If the warnings of such men had been heeded it would have been 

 better for the prosperity of Ontario. 



Lumbering Conditions 



In former times, the region under consideration lay within the 

 southern fringe of the vast pinery that covered the southern slope 

 of the Laurentian shield. In nearly all the townships, licenses had 



