28 



hillsides by boys who go out from villages with their iron rakes in 

 autumn to secure winter supplies. Grazing animals, searching every 

 ledge and crevice, crop the remaining grass down to the very roots. 



A dearth of wood is not the only forlorn result of forest devasta- 

 tion* a dearth of water and the ruin of the soil follow in its train. 

 In western China, where forest destruction is not yet complete, 

 enough vegetation covers the mountains to retard the run-off of the 

 rains and return sufficient moisture to lower levels, where it can be 

 reached by the roots of crops and where springs are numerous. But 

 on the waste hills of eastern China the rains rush off from the barren 

 surfaces, flooding the valleys, ruining the fields, and destroying towns 

 and villages. No water is retained at the higher levels, so that none 

 is fed underground to the lower soils or to the springs. As a result, 

 even on the plains the water level is too far beneath the surface to be 

 used. Without irrigation and the ingenious terracing of hillsides, by 

 which the rains are made to wash the soil into thousands of minia- 

 ture fields whose edges are propped up by walls, agriculture would 

 be entirely impossible. Even irrigation calls for the immense labor 

 of drawing the needed water from wells. 



In a word, the Chinese, by forest waste, have brought upon them- 

 selves two costly calamities — floods and water famine. The forest 

 school just opened at Mukden is the first step in the direction of re- 

 pairing this waste so far as it now may be repaired. 



CANADA. 



About one- third of the Dominion of Canada, 1,249,000 square 

 miles, or nearly 800,000,000 acres, is classed as woodland, though 

 the area stocked with commercial timber probably does not exceed 

 260,000,000 acres. The net exports of wood are over 2,000,000 tons a 

 year — more than double those of the United States. The per capita 

 consumption is high — 60 cubic feet a year for timber and 132 cubic 

 feet for fuel. A forest office in the department of the interior has 

 been established since 1899, and since 1901 a protective service of fire 

 rangers has been organized in some of the Dominion lands, with 

 excellent results. Farmers and others, particularly in the central 

 prairie regions, have been supplied free of charge with 7,000,000 

 seedlings for forest plantation. 



In the Dominion and the Provinces, together, 203,500,000 acres 

 have been made " forest reserves." The porportion of land in these 

 reserves which at present bears merchantable timber is, however, in 

 many cases small. Thus, while the reserves of British Columbia, 

 recently created, nominally cover 100,000,000 acres, it is believed that 

 not more than one-tenth of this area has a gTOwth of commercial 

 timber. 



[Cir. 140] 



