110 OF WOOD IN GENERAL 



r In the early days of its occupation by the French, the forests of 

 Eastern Canada, which then stretched unbroken from the Atlantic 

 to the head of the St. Lawrence basin, a distance of over 2,000 miles, 

 engaged the attention of the Government, who drew from them 

 large numbers of masts and spars for their navy and issued stringent 

 regulations for the preservation of the Oak. On the conquest of 

 the country by Great Britain, which then had almost the entire 

 trade with the Baltic, Canadian lumber was neglected ; but the con- 

 tinental blockade during the war with Napoleon directed the atten- 

 tion of our timber importers to the resources of Canada, and an 

 import of 2,600 loads in 1800 grew to one of 125,300 loads in 1810, 

 and over 300,000 loads in 1820, whilst for the last fifty years it has 

 exceeded a million loads annually. Whilst during the first half of 

 the last century Canada only exported wood to the United King- 

 dom and the West Indies, for the last twenty years she has experi- 

 enced a steadily increasing demand from the United States, which 

 now take about half her annual export, or some 13 milHon dollars' 

 worth annually. For many years past the Pine logs floated down 

 to Ottawa have numbered nearly four miUions a year ; and now the 

 demand for paper-pulp has given the Spruce, owing to the far greater 

 area of its distribution, a value in the aggregate much greater than 

 that of the Pines. 



In addition to the southern forest belt, now so largely cleared 

 or depleted in the eastern half, there is the great northern forest 

 which stretches from the Straits of Belle-Isle round by the southern 

 end of James Bay to Alaska, a distance of about 4,000 miles, with 

 a breadth of some 700 miles. " This vast forest," says Dr. Eobert 

 Bell of the Canadian Geological Survey, " has everywhere the same 

 characteristics. The trees, as a rule, are not large, and they con- 

 sist essentially of the following nine species : Black and White 

 Spruce, Banksian Pine, Larch, Balsam Fir, Aspen, Balsam Poplar, 

 Canoe Birch, Bird-Cherry, White Cedar, White and Red Pines : 

 Black Ash and Eowan occur sparingly in the southern part of this 

 belt." 



With nearly 38 per cent, of the whole area of the Dominion under 

 forest, Canadians have in the past given Httle heed to conservation, 

 believing in the power of natural reproduction to balance the forces 

 of destruction, a behef which, when not substantiated by careful 

 statistical investigation, is a dangerous fool's paradise. 



Conclusions. — ^A most valuable practical test of the increased 

 consumption and the growing scarcity of timber is the advance in 

 prices. It has been estimated that in Germany from about 1550 

 to 1750 wood quadrupled in price, from 1750 to 1830 the progres- 

 sive increase of price was at the same rate, but from 1830 to 1880 



