11 



much cattle or obtaining much manure, and the land thus again, from this secondary 

 cause, yet further deteriorates. 



If we take into consideration what has occurred as previously stated, concerning the 

 destruction of forests in the Province of Quebec and its results, and remember that the 

 same state of affairs exists in many of the older settled States of the adjoining Union, 

 and remember also how little isolated and individual action can do in the way of remedy, 

 there is no avoiding the conclusion that, in our own Province of Ontario, unless the 

 strong hand of Governmental assistance is brought into operation, even the small reserves 

 of woodland which here and there dot the surface of our present cultivated territory will 

 disappear, and their absence will produce the same results as have in other countries 

 'invariably been found to follow similar losses, In the eastern portion of the United 

 States the same deterioration of soil is observable, and has proceeded step by step with 

 their disforesting. Many once fertile farms there are now abandoned through sterility ; 

 while, as if to point out more clearly cause and effect, as will be shown by quotations 

 further on, the operations of replanting which have been in progress for thirty or forty 

 years in certain districts there, have not only produced new forests but improved growth 

 in the adjacent cultivated lands. This is especially the case in Massachusetts. 



Speaking of Massachusetts tree planting, we may remark that that whole eastern 

 coast, following the French success, is conquering the sand drift with the pine tree. 

 Numerous instances are given where these artificial plantations are now yielding 

 merchantable timber, and some where the original woodlands, preserved for that 

 purpose and properly managed, had yielded larger returns than money devoted to the 

 purchase of lots afterwards forming part of the most flourishing cities, and of course pay- 

 ing well. It should be noticed here that Nature, always benevolent, has offered a 

 remarkable inducement here. The very lands most useless to the agriculturist — the light 

 and almost barren sands — are those on which, according to French, German and Ameri- 

 can experience, we may hope for most success in planting the most desirable, the most 

 rapidly disappearing of all our timber, the great Canadian pine. Sombre, indeed, as that 

 dark tree passed by ^neas on the downward way. 



' ' Ulmua opaca, ingens, quam sedem Somnia vulgo. 

 Vana tenere ferunt, foliisque sub omnibus haerent ;" 



or, we may translate freely, — 



Vast elm, impervious to daylight's beams. 



Where live the Visions and where haunt the Dreams. 



But no tree of all the forest will serve Ontario so well as these tall, gloomy guardians 

 of the soil, valuable for the timber they yield, doubly valuable for the climatic influence 

 their giant height and dense foliage exert, forming a link as they do in the transmission 

 of moisture between the heavens above, the earth beneath, and the waters under the 

 earth. 



Already a great number of the smaller streams which formerly flowed continuously 

 throughout the length and breadth of Ontario are dried up, or only run during the floods 

 produced by spring thaws or autumn rains. With the utter disappearance of our forest 

 reserves, those which yet remain will more and more entirely disappear. 



