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timber, in a position where it will always command ready sale, and comparatively 

 untouched by the lumberman or settler, offers as yet a most excellent opportunity not 

 only for procuring timber, but also for maintaining the supply. If this reserve were at 

 once taken in hand and managed on the European or East Indian plan, those trees only 

 cut which are of age and size, and cut so as not to injure others; and the whole forest 

 then mapped into sections, each in charge of a competent forester, the forest could be 

 maintained in perpetuity as good as, or better, than it now is, and a large supply of the 

 bsst lumber yearly drawn therefrom. 



Further hindrance of the right of control belonging to Ontario will be most prejudicial. 

 For in the meantime the demand for lumber in the North- West will grow apace ; private 

 individuals will commence to cut ; lumbering operations will be 'carried on by rival 

 parties ; and as soon as these operations are proceeded with on a larger scale, and with 

 the reckless haste which probably will characterize them, fire is certain to occur, proba- 

 bly at many points, and, in that region of rocky timbered slopes and ridges, fully open, 

 too, to the sweeping prairie winds, it may well be expected from what has happened in 

 far less exposed localities, that before the boundary is found, this great forest, of price- 

 less value if properly used now, will be utterly lost. 



THE POSITION IN WHICH FORESTS WOULD BEST AFFECT THE 



ONTARIO CLIMATE. 



To produce their best effect on climate, three points are to be observed. 1st. To 

 occupy the heights, firstly that they are generally of poor land well spared for that purpose ; 

 secondly, that wooded elevations preserve rain, feed springs, and continue water-courses in 

 regular action. 2nd. They should be of considerable depth as well as length, as a thin 

 line of forest will not by any means preserve the moist and humid atmosphere within 

 their bounds on which their beneficial action depends. For such purposes, they should 

 not, if it could be avoided, be less than a mile in depth from front to rear, and they had 

 better be ten or twenty. To act as reservoirs of humidity they must be of fair extent, 

 otherwise they will neither be able to feed the water-courses, nor to send upward? to 

 the clouds those moist currents which, it appears by all experiment, meeting with a 

 differently constituted atmosphere of the air, produce rain at those seasons when it is 

 most needed. 3rd. If possible, such forests should stretch across Ontario in lines from 

 north-west to south-east. They would then be in position profitably to intercept the 

 south-west wind, which is the great bearer of moisture hither from the Oulf of Mexico 

 and the tropical seas. For instance, as has been observed, the great forest north-east of 

 Ontario does not bring much rain relatively to Ontario. Most of the rain a forest 

 obtains will fall north-east of that forest. The exceptions are when an east or northeast 

 wind, meeting the south-west current, produces rain, and is sufficiently strong to carry 

 before it the rain-bringing current; but this is not to be depended on, the intention in 

 endeavouring to preserve the forest in the line mentioned, being that the ascending cur- 

 rents shall meet and produce rain from the moisture-bearing winds, which are mostly 

 south-west in reality, though often deflected and turned away by local or other influences. 

 Of course it is not expected that Ontario can be mapped out in field and forest at this late 



