135 



of fire 



In last year's report, out of fifteen surveyor's statements eleven speak of the ravages 



THE PINE LUMBER REMAINING. 



The latest opinions of value procurable on this head are perhaps those given by 

 Messrs. Drutnmond, Little, and others who have studied this subject, at the last year's 

 Forestry Convention. Maine and Michigan were mentioned. At Bangor, long famed for 

 vast lumber mills, only fourteen million feet were procurable in 1877, against over a 

 hundred million in 1856. The whole Saginaw valley, Michigan, the very home of the 

 lumber trade, is nearly culled. What this means may be imagined when we learn that 

 it has been cutting with mills of six hundred million feet capacity. Their lumber 

 journals declare that in all Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota — the'western pine States, 

 there is not ten years' supply with the present demand. We may, 1 think, consider that 

 the demand is likely to increase, perhaps to double. With this, and especially if they 

 have a recurrence of their terrible fires, there .may not be five years' supply. Concerning 

 Ontario, we are told that Mr. Little has consulted the best authorities, and is persuaded 

 that in Canada (5,000, Quebec; 3,500 Ontario ; N.B. and N.S. 1,500) we have but ten 

 thousand million feet of piae, while we are at present cutting a thousand million feet 

 yearly, leaving ten years' supply. Consider this in the same light, and look at some 

 Canadian fire statistics further on, and we may well doubt whether we have five years' 

 supply. In Newfoundland there is little good pine left. It must be noted that a well- 

 known lumberman, Mr. J. K. Wood, puts the amount manufactured yearly in Canada at 

 nearly two thousand million feet, adding to pine spruce and other woods. If we count 

 the pine timber remaining in the States, we shall find that, after Michigan, Minnesota, 

 and Wisconsin are exhausted, say in seven years, there will probably be twice as much, 

 say fourteen years supply, in the other States, such as the large and slowly decreasing 

 forests still standing in Arkansas, Louisiana, and California. 



In view of these facts, let us observe what will, in a very few years, be our position 

 in Ontario, or even in Canada. We have but between five and ten years' supply. The 

 Americans have their Southern and Pacific States as a reserve, where, though at great 

 cost of carriage, they may obtain pine. But Ontario has no such reserve. In a few yeara 

 we shall have but some districts of woodland to our north and north-east, culled of their 

 best pine, and alternated with great sections over which the fire has swept, while the rest 

 but wait for it to arrive, that the destruction may be complete. At one of the late 

 forestry conventions Mr. Thistle, a lumberman and surveyor, gave it as his decided 

 opinion that ten times as much lumber was destroyed by fire as by the axe. Let us 

 carry this to its conclusion. We have been exporting perhaps twenty million of dollars 

 worth yearly. What if we have been losing two hundred millions 1 Is it not time — 

 would it not have paid fifty-fold — would it not still pay — to give the care to preserve 

 our forests that Europeans give theirs? It was thought that this was a wooden country, 

 aad that there was no such danger. I would ask my readers to study the descriptions of 

 European forestry in other of these pages. They will not be able to avoid the conclusion 

 that, in a few years, Germany,- Prussia, and other European countries will be better 



