91 



where pupils are instructed both experimentally and theoretically in all forest learning, 

 the collegiate home studies being constantly varied by excursions of parties of pupils, 

 under charge of professors, to those forests where, at the time, most can be learned. 

 Proficiency in these schools forms, of course, a strong recommendation to future advance- 

 ment in the Government or private forest service. For admission to the school candi- 

 dates must bring a letter of authorization from the Director-General of Forests, which 

 can only be obtained by those from nineteen to twenty-two, without infirmities, and 

 having a diploma of Bachelor of Letters, or attainments in classical studies to warrant 

 such diploma. They must also have an income of $300 per annum, or a pledge from 

 friends to provide it, and $120 afterwards till employed as garde-general on active duty. 

 In the difficulties which have hindered the efiforts being made, especially in America, 

 to preserve a due amount of forest, one of the most formidable has been the disinclination 

 to interfere with private rights. It will be of service in Canada in this matter to notice 

 how summarily, in France, this matter has been managed. I will therefore quote the 

 principles of law upon which the forest code of France is founded, as stated with great 

 precision by Professor Macarel (a writer deservedly of the highest estimation) in his 

 " Gours de Droit Administratif." As they embrace views applicable in other countries 

 under like necessities — being, in fact, an extension of the right of eminent domain, or 

 that maxim of Roman law, salics populi suprema est — they will be especially germane 

 to our purpose. He says : — 



" Bestrictions Implied in the Free Enjoyment of the Soil. 



" As to the woods and forests : 



" The preservation of forests is one of the first interests of society, and consequently 

 one of the first duties of Government. It is not alone from the wealth which they offer 

 that we may judge. Their existence is of itself of incalculable benefit, as well in the pro- 

 tection and feeding of the springs and rivers as in their prevention of the washing away 

 of the soil from mountains, and in the beneficial influence which they exert upon the 

 atmosphere. 



" Large forests deaden and break the force of , heavy winds that beat out the seeds 

 and injure the growth of plants ; they form reservoirs of moisture ; they shelter the 

 growth of the fields ; and upon hill-sides, where the rainwaters, checked in their descent 

 by the thousand obstacles they present by their roots and by the trunks of trees, have 

 time to filter into the soil and only find their way by slow degrees to the rivers. They 

 regulate, in a certain degree, the flow of the waters and the hygrometrical condition of 

 the atmosphere, and their destruction accordingly increases the duration of droughts and 

 give rise to the injuries of inundations, which denude the face of the mountains. 



" Penetrated with these truths, legislators have in all ages made the preservation of 

 forests an object of special solicitude. 



" Unfortunately, private interests — that is to say, the action of those who do not 

 directly feel the power of the Government — are often opposed to this great national inte- 

 rest, and the laws framed for protection are often powerless. 



"In France, the ordinances prior to the revolution carried too far the restrictions 

 imposed on private owners. The new regulations fell into the opposite extreme, and 

 allowed the proprietors free and absolute liberty to dispose of their woods. 



" A large destruction followed this imprudent translation from excess of restraint to 

 excess of liberty. The proprietors abused this unwonted freedom, and clearings multiplied 

 indefinitely, without distinction as to the places where they were made, so that in many 

 localities the rushing down of the denuded soil and the deforesting of mountains caused 

 the soil needed for vegetation to disappear and left the rocks naked. The rise in the 

 price of wood and the easy and certain resource oS'ered to proprietors in the clearing of a 



