against the ■wind-carried waves of sea sand, which previously every adverse gale scattered 

 in masses far inland, to the utter destruction of the arable soil. In both these countries, 

 within the same period, as well as in Germany, in the far distant region of Australia, and, 

 indeed, in most civilized lands, schools of forestry have been improved or have been 

 established, provision made for the drawing thence annually a body of trained foresters 

 for the service of the State, and governmental machinery created, whereby their services 

 will be at once and continually available for the preservation of existing and the planting 

 of fresh sections of woodland, 



But of all this, while the chief mass of Ontario timber was destroyed, little was 

 known to the world, and leas to the destroyers. If, here and there some one had more 

 skill in natural philosophy than his brethren of the log heap, he also had skill to see that 

 he alone could not impress the masses in such a matter, and that his efforts would do but 

 little to preserve the naturally assisting relation between forest leaf and ear of grain. 

 Some few I heard of as having enclosed, thinned and protected from fire and cattle their 

 modicum of woodland ; but so few and far between were these that I never knew person- 

 ally one. I knew thousands who did not. Those few who had means and will lacked 

 experience and teachers. 



I remember, when little over twenty years of age, I made my first experiment in 

 clearing a hundred acres. I left ten acres of solid, lofty timber in a strip along the north 

 side as a shelter against the coldest wind. It was for ultimate, not for immediate service, 

 for behind it stretched, broad and untouched, the forest of many miles in depth. The 

 strip, when its border stood fully exposed by my clearing operations, formed a pretty 

 picture. Thick with dense young trees below, and great hemlocks, red oaks of mighty 

 size, waving beech and heavy maple nodding their leafy heads, above, it stood (for my 

 fires had not touched it), from ground to summit twigs, a wall of living green ; which, 

 when the cool daybreak air of June, purified beyond the imagination of city dwellers by 

 many a charcoal heap, had covered the great leaf masses, the branches, the angular rail 

 fence below, and every forest weed around, with myriads of bright and glancing drops of 

 dew, shone, flashed and waved along its whole emerald length, and down a thousand 

 opening and closing vistas, like the wall of Fairy-land itself. " These other country 

 fellows," thought I, "chop down everything, but I shall preserve this' beautiful growth, 

 at least, whatever happens." 



Well, time passed on. Next year was a dry summer, and an English gentleman 

 who knew considerably less than the little we knew, cleared at one fell swoop 

 a hundred acres behind mine, and burnt the soil of half his farm beyond redemption 

 in the process. I was many miles away, and what shall hinder his tires from, 

 by way of a gentle commencement, running all around the border, and some 

 forty fqet into my pretty reserve. Down went my young maples by the thou- 

 sand; my little hemlocks, their roots burnt from under them, stood in blackened 

 and spectre-like rows. The beauty of the strip was gone. Next year, a poor 

 settler lived near with some cattle he could not feed, so turned them loose. They did not 

 leave a young tree nor a green branch they could reach in my ten acres. The result of 

 these combined attacks was that the moisture seemed to leave the strip. The vegetable 

 Qoating of massing roots and rotting leaves was swept away, and the great trees which 



