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enough for square timber, many a pine is cut down and left to rot. There may be some- 

 thing wrong about the heart or in the length ; that would not have prevented it from 

 being turned into saw logs, but won't do for square timber, and so it is condemned. 



" Chips made in squaring trees considerably increase the danger of fire. In summer 

 they get very dry and inflammable, and the way in which they are disposed in straight 

 lines, thirty, forty, and fifty feet long, like trains of gunpowder, appears well calculated 

 for spreading the flames through the dead pine leaves, dry branches, and moss. 



" But, perhaps, they cannot do without those huge beams of timber in England 1 In 

 most cases, the first thing they do, when they get them there, is to cut them up." 



Mr. Joly proposes that we should cut them up ourselves, and says : — 



'' I think it would come cheaper to the consumer in England. Square timber is not 

 invariably sound all through ; when cut up, unexpected flaws and rots are often dis- 

 covered that were invisible from the outside. Those flaws would have been discovered if 

 the timber had been sawn up here, and the defective parts would not have been sent 

 across." 



Mr. Joly states that the heavy loss incurred in throwing away so much of the best 

 clear timber at the butt of the tree, in order to square it, is altogether unnecessary. It 

 • is done, he says, merely to please a few people in England who have large sawmills, and 

 have their wealth in the very simple craft of cutting the beams up on their arrival there. 

 To check this, Mr. Joly proposes the simple expedient of charging sufficiently high export 

 duty on large square timber, in which case, he thinks, and apparently with good reason, 

 we ourselves would cut up the whole log to the sizes required, send it all to England, and 

 get as much per foot for the whole as we now do for the three-fourths. This would be 

 better evidently for the lumberman, for the Government, for the country, and for the 

 English consumer. 



Mr. Joly notices that this regulation exists in Quebec : — " It shall be no longer per- 

 mitted to cut on Crown lands pine trees measuring less than twelve inches in diameter at 

 the stump ; " and in Quebec only ; and states that the same regulation should be enforced 

 everywhere. 



Concerning the planting of forest trees, he says : — 



"It is not only in old countries, like England, France, and Germany, that new 

 forests are planted ; it is in countries younger than Canada, in New Zealand and the 

 Australian Colonies, for instance, where wood is not such an object of first necessity as 

 with us, and where it is not so scarce as on our western prairies and, I am sorry to say, 

 in some of our old eastern settlements. 



" New Zealand, the Australian Colonies, and India have taken active steps for plant- 

 ing new forests ; and, at our doors, the United States Government are giving encourage- 

 ment, by grants of land and otherwise, to those who are willing to plant trees, while a 

 number of societies are working in the same direction. We have only, if I am not mis- 

 taken, one society in the Dominion whose only purpose is to encourage the plantation of 

 forest trees (I do not speak of orchards). It is in the Province of Quebec, where the 

 want of it is seriously felt; each member binds himself to plant a certain number of trees 

 every year. Government will have to give some encouragement, and go to the expense of 

 making experiments on a larger scale, before any important results can be anticipated." 



Mr. Joly says, with regard to the selection of trees for planting ; — 



" I have made experiments for several years past, and the conclusions arrived at by 

 me are so much at variance with the general opinion of the experienced men to whom I 

 have communicated them, that I feel a considerable degree of hesitation in making them 

 known. However, they are founded on facts and not mere theory, and no harm can re- 



