Canadian Agriculture. 
453 
the white oak and rock elm have been already exported, while 
the cherry, black walnut, red cedar, and hickory have likewise 
been practically exhausted. Red oak, basswood, white ash, 
red cedar, hemlock, butternut, and hard maple, as well as many 
inferior woods, are still to be found in sufficient quantity for 
home consumption. A considerable supply of yellow birch 
still exists, and in some regions it is as yet almost untouched. 
The white pine, the great Canadian timber tree, has a more 
limited range than is generally supposed, and the principal 
reserves are in the region around Lake Temiscaming, and 
thence westward to the eastern shores of Lake Superior. When 
the exportable white and red pine have become exhausted, as 
must happen before many years, there are still vast quantities 
of spruce and larch, which may even now be regarded as the 
principal timber available for this purpose in the future. 
Tremendous havoc has been wrought by forest fires, and it is 
estimated that the quantity of red and white pine destroyed in 
this way in the Ottawa Valley and in the St. ^Maurice and 
Georgian Bay regions is many times greater than all that has 
been felled by the axe. Yet even this is insignificant compared 
with the quantity of pine, spruce, cedar, larch, balsam, and 
other trees which have been destroyed by fire in the more 
northern latitudes all the way from tne Gulf of St. Lawrence to 
the Nelson River, and thence northwestward. The northern 
coniferous forests are more liable than others to be destroyed 
by fire. In the summer season, when the gummy tops of the 
trees and the mossy ground are alike dry, they burn with almost 
explosive rapidity. Small trees are thickly mingled with the 
larger ones, so that their branches touch each other, and thus 
form a sufficiently dense fuel to support a continuous sheet of 
flame on a grand scale. Before a high wind the fire sweeps on 
with a roaring noise, and at a rate which prevents the birds and 
beasts from escaping. After a time, shrubs and bushes spring 
up on the burnt area, then aspens and white birches, among 
which the cone-bearing trees begin to appear, and after a 
century and a half or more these will have regained possession. 
This alternation of crops of timber appears to have been going 
on for many centuries, but in modern times the fires have been 
more numerous than formerly. Occasionally due to lightning, 
these fires are mostly traceable to the carelessness of white 
men and demoralised Indians. The fires are not so liable to run 
in forests of full grown white and red pines, and hard wood 
forests are seldom burnt to any great extent. In several locali- 
ties I noticed the weird sight presented by the charred and 
branchless trunks as they were left, dead and silent, after the 
furv of the fire had swept over them. 
