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BULLETIN OF THE NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 
1 14 . — On an Indispensable Pre-requisite to a Successful 
Forestry Policy for New Brunswick. 
Read January 5, 1909 ; addenda, October, 1909. 
It must be a matter of rejoicing to the members of this 
Society that the citizens of New Brunswick, and therefore their 
government, have finally awakened to the importance of a policy 
of conservation of the public forests and related interests. Thus 
the first real step towards forest development has been taken. 
The second, unfortunately, is likely to prove almost equally slow 
and costly, — namely, a realization that a forestry policy will not 
administer itself and cannot be carried out by anybody to whom 
it happens to be convenient to turn it over, but that it is a matter 
for trained experts. As the members of this Society well know, 
I have spent much of my summers for some twenty years past 
in the woods of New Brunswick, and have penetrated, unguided, 
to its most remote parts, in pursuit of scientific facts about the 
geography and natural history of the province. I have thus had 
opportunity to see at first hand, and uninfluenced by those who 
may have special interests to advance, the methods, the results 
and the needs of administration of the public lands. Further, 
my interest in these matters has led me to seek information as to 
the ways in which they are managed elsewhere and the results 
of such management. And, finally, I think the conclusions I 
have reached are as nearly disinterested as can possibly be, since 
my attitude towards the whole matter is abstract and scientific, 
and I have no personal ends, present or conceivable, to serve. 
Upon this basis, and with these data, I have been led to con- 
clusions which are briefly a3 follows : Our forestry interests, 
including therein lumbering, hunting, trapping, fishing, opening 
of lands for settlement, regulation of water supplies and develop- 
ment of water powers, provision for sportsmen-tourists, for wild 
parks and for samitoria, are capable of a vastly greater and more 
profitable development than they have yet attained ; but on the 
other hand the conditions are so complex that their efficient 
