

FISHERIES, GAME AND FORESTS. 



393 



factory operative, that physically degraded type of humanity one sees in all big 

 manufacturing towns. With the destruction of the forests in England have gone 

 the stalwart men who once worked in them; to be replaced by the factory hand — 

 weak-lunged, knock-kneed and sallow. One has only to travel through the forests 

 of the continent of Europe and then visit a few of the large manufacturing towns of 

 England, to have this physical degeneration of the race brought home in the most 

 forcible and unpleasant manner. The wood industries are mostly healthy (to a 

 great extent out-of-doors) occupations, and they usually employ a robust country 

 population living partly on their forests and partly on their gardens and small agri- 

 cultural allotments. But let us consider the one million people that in Germany 

 live and labor in the forests. What a reserve of national strength ! They are 

 fairly, most people would say sufficiently, educated ; and their healthy life in the 

 open air and constant exercise preserves a physical development, a strength of frame 

 and constitution, that is rare in these days of machinery and easy chairs! Judging 

 from what I saw at a recent visit to the forests of Germany and the big towns of 

 England, I should say that England could better afford to pay .£20,750,000 for for- 

 eign wood than to lose the broad-shouldered and muscular men who once worked in 

 her forests. These are the men whom we value as colonists — men fitted to go forth 

 and subdue the waste places of the earth." 



24. TAPPING TREES FOR RESIN IN FRANCE. 



