REPORT 



ON THE 



^mmi^ of f t'^sming mi fleplantrng gm^H. 



When the paddles of the Frenchmen first broke the clear waters of Toronto Bay, and 

 their canoes grated on the bright beach of sand which then surrounded that harbour, 

 Ontario, from the Detroit to the Ottawa, was under the roof of the forest. It contained 

 at that time, as has been well remarked by one of the best qualified judges in the United 

 States, perhaps the most valuable masses of timber which ever existed in a region of its 

 size. There were hundreds of thousands — nay, there were millions of acres of magnificent 

 maples, two feet — three — four feet through, their rugged trunks rising clear, separate, 

 distinct, to the lofty arches of the forest, like the pillars of som'.s great cathedral, over- 

 shadowing and crushing out by their ponderous vitality all inferior growths, so that below 

 a carriage might have been driven for many miles' in any direction, unimpeded through 

 the park-like woodland. There were vast sections of beech timber, their clear blue-grey 

 stems standing far away in the indefinite perspective of the forest, and here and there 

 reflecting from their shining surfaces the occasional rays by which the sun was able to 

 penetrate the mass of foliage overhead — great trees — three, or even four, fourteen feet 

 logs to the trunk, a reservoir of plane-wood which would have lasted all the carpenters of 

 the world for a century. There was white-oak, would have ribbed the navies of Europe, 

 and ash sufficient to plank them all to the water-line. There are many perfect works 

 in the forest, there is none more perfect than the white ash. Its shaft, round and 

 perpendicular, sheathed in serrated bark of clear cut channels unique in their beauty, 

 forms a picture the very axe might be loth to destroy. There were hickory trees by mil- 

 lions, the shaggy outer-covering hanging in strips from the huge red-brown trunks, had 

 kept the world in axe-handles till doomsday. There were miles upon miles — there were 

 hundreds of miles of wide-spreading cedar flats, where the traveller's foot might all day 

 long press the mossy covering of their protruding and gigantic roots, while around him 

 stUl arose on all sides the upright shafts, the curiou? leaning branches of that most pic- 

 turesque of trees. There were dark and apparently illimitable forests of hemlock, of 

 which axe and fire have long since found the limit, as the tanners are learning to their 

 cost. There were millions of silver-skinned birches, and iron-woods in countless numbers. 



