of the forest left standing will not, without care, continue many years in a state produc- 

 tive of timber or beneficial to the climate. 



These trees have grown, root and trunk, in the shade. The outside rows, exposed to 

 the sun, wither gradually, decay, and are easily uprooted by the force of the wind, injur- 

 ing the inner and younger trees in their fall. Then, if cattle are allowed entrance they 

 will kill every young tree, a process which, as far as my observation extends, dries up the 

 soil in small blocks of forest, and precipitates windfalls of large trees in all directions. 

 In fine, the forest in most sections of Ontario, if left to itself in isolated patches, rapidly 

 deteriorates. When we add to this the continual pressure in all directions, inducing 

 owners to sell their wood and clear their lands, we must admit that if no active move- 

 itient be made for their preservation, the forests which once overspread Ontario will soon 

 give place to a bare and denuded surface, broken only by the low branches of an occa- 

 sional orchard or the few trees which some one, here and there, has set in line along his 

 fences or around his house. 



That there is cause for much apprehension in the matter is a fact which can be well 

 proven by contemporary experience, and it would be impossible to find a better method of 

 obtaining such than by examining what has happened in those portions of Canada settled 

 previously to our own. Let us look to old Lower Canada, the present. Province of 

 Quebec. Let us first consider the character of its inhabitants. The Lower Canadians 

 are industrious, thrifty and home-loving. Their climate is a severe one. So far as the 

 habits of their ancestors may be thought to influence, it may be remarked that no other 

 nation were so careful in the preservation of their forests as, when they settled Quebec, 

 were the French. There is, then, every reason to suppose that Quebec has been as well 

 treated in that respect as Ontario is likely to be. May I, then, ask the attention of my 

 readers to the condition of the older settled portions of Quebec, a state of affairs which 

 any one travelling in that Province can verify, and which no one aware of the character 

 of the witness whose testimony I am about to quote, will for a moment doubt. I allude 

 to the Hon. H. G. Joly, of Quebec, from whose valuable report on "Forestry in Canada" 

 I shall elsewhere quote further. With reference to the matter at present before us he 

 says : — 



" As far back as the year 1696 the attention of the French Governors of Canada was 

 drawn to the wasteful destruction of the forests, and they were called upon to check it. 

 Nothing, however, was done by them, and little has been done since. The result stares 

 us reproachfully in the face, especially in the Province of Quebec, the oldest in the 

 Dominion. The old settlements are painfully bare of trees ; you can sometimes go miles 

 without seeing any trees worth looking at, and the passing stranger fancies himself in a 

 country more denuded of trees than the oldest parts of Europe. There is a large district 

 of very good agricultural land south of Montreal, where the scarcity of firewood, which is 

 a matter of life and death in our climate, has compelled many a farmer to sacrifice a fine 

 farm and leave the country. There are many other spots in the Province nearly as bad, 

 and unfortunately the process of destruction is going on even now in more places than 

 one." 



There is no reason to suppose that the residents in our Province of Ontario will be, 

 if left to their individual guidance, more careful of their wooden reserves than have been 

 our French Canadian friends. If on the one hand the Lower Canadian habit of parti- 

 tioning their farm lands among the members of a family was likely to create a demand 



