10 



for more fuel and more timber from each, hundred acres than is our own, it is to be 

 remembered that in their rigorous climate they had greater cause to fear a scarcity, and 

 had every necessity to practise the art of replanting and of husbanding their woodlands. 

 Nor had they at the time most of their clearing was performed an excuse for carelessness 

 in reservation of timber, which has to a great extent prevailed in Ontario, namely, — the 

 certainty of being able, by means of the number of railways, which in every direction 

 chequer the surface of the latter Province, to purchase coal at reasonable rates. The 

 Province of Quebec had been sixty years in the hands of the British before coal was even 

 to any extent used in New York city. On the other hand, to my own knowledge, many 

 an Ontario farmer has cut down his last tree, sold off the timber from his last five or ten 

 acres of bush, with the consoling reflection, " Well, if the wood does run out, I can get 

 coal, and folks say it's hotter and cheaper." Taking all this into consideration, no reason- 

 able observer can doubt that the settled portion of Ontario is on the high road to becoming 

 as destitute of woodland as Mr. Joly's pamphlet pictures any part of Quebec. 



And here I will ask my readers to consider a point which might, perhaps, better 

 come later, as more connected with what will then be introduced, but which may be now 

 mentioned as concerning the Province just spoken of. We will remark, before we lose 

 sight of this Very important feature, the injurious effect this over^learing has had on the 

 Province of Quebec. 



It is well known to every person of ordinary information that in times past quanti- 

 ties of wheat were raised in and sold by the Province of Quebec. Certain valleys drained 

 by great rivers there, covering vast areas of land, were thought to be the very home of 

 the wheat plant. Before 1830, the yield of wheat in Lower Canada is said to have been 

 enormous ; between then and 1865 it sank to an insignificant fraction ; since then better 

 farming has to a certain degree restored it, though to nothing approaching its old fer- 

 tility. It has been usual to call the process which caused the injury "over-cropping." 

 No one doubts that with good farming and favourable seasons the land might, as much 

 land has, have stood the cropping without deterioration. But if it could be proved that, 

 on the contrary, the process of clearing the forests tended to carry away the fertile portion 

 of the soil, and had done more, had even prevented the possibility of seasons continuing as 

 favourable as formerly, would it not do much to account for the falling off? What if we 

 can discover by undoubted testimony that this is so ? We shall, I think, in the course of 

 this book find proof of these two important points. 



First. — That gentle, frequent and refreshing showers, where a country is to a proper 

 extent retained in forest, are likely constantly to occur throughout the summer months, 

 giving their well-known and powerful stimulus to all the growths of the field. 



Second. — That when such proportions of forests are not retained the showers are not 

 equally distributed ; they do not descend at the especial time, nor in the manner bene- 

 ficial to the plant, and being precipitated in floods, the result is-; — 



That they do not frequently, and therefore not nearly so advantageously give 

 moisture to the earth. That, coming in floods, they bear away, in discoloured overflow 

 much of the richest earth of the fields. That extended areas of pasture, meadow and 

 plough land thus rendered comparatively infertile, cannot yield the means of keeping 



