Placing in one division, although climatic and economic conditions are variable within it, the great and practically forestless interior area of approximately one million five hundred thousand square miles, we have that part of the country in which timber-planting has been long practiced, where climatic amelioration is the main function of the woodlots, and where there is endless oppor tunity for further extension and more rational management.
The Rocky mountain region is relatively scantily wooded with short coniferous growth, improving to the northward. Farmers and miners will some day bemoan the destruction by fire which has so uselessly wasted thousands of square miles.
The mountain regions of the Pacific coast states are still so densely wooded with magnificent conif erous growth, that the practice of farm forestry probably could not find lodgment even in the agricultural valleys adjoining. But in southern California there are forestless regions where the woodlot, planted eucalyptus groves, has already earned its well-appreciated position.
Forests of Canada.
The forest area of Canada, including the wood lands of the northern territories and of the prairies, is estimated at approximately 1,250,000 square miles, but the area in strictly commercially val, able wood probably does not now exceed 500,000 square miles, nearly half of which is in British Columbia. Commercial timber is now, and will con tinue to be, secured from the forests of the old eastern provinces and British Columbia,the remain ing territory being either forestless or depleted of its valuable timber. Some twenty-five millions of acres have been cut out in the settlement of the country for farm purposes.
The composition in general is the same as that of the northern forest in the United States : hard woods (birch, maple and elm prevailing) with conifers mixed, the latter, especially spruce, be coming pure occasionally. The nearly pure hard wood forest of the southern Ontario peninsula has been supplanted almost entirely by farms, and here, even for domestic fuel, coal, imported from the United States, is used. Although white pine, the most important staple, is found in all parts of this forest region, the best and largest supplies are now confined to the region north of Georgian bay. Unopened spruce- and fir-lands still abound,
especially in Quebec on the Gaspe peninsula. Spruce forms also the largest share in the composition of the New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Newfound land forest, the pine in the first two provinces having practically been cut out. Extensive, almost pure balsam-fir forest, fit for pulp wood, still covers the plateau of Cape Breton, while Prince Edward island is to the extent of 60 per cent cleared for agricultural use.
Much of this eastern forest area is not only culled of its best timber, but burnt over, and thereby deteriorated in its composition.
North of the Height of Land (a plateau with low hills, which cuts off the Atlantic region from the northern country, and marks the northern limit of commercial forest) in Ungava and west ward, spruce continues to timber line, but, outside of narrow belts following the river valleys, only in open stand, branchy and stunted, hardly fit even for pulp, for the most part intermixed with birch and aspen. This open spruce forest continues more or less to the northern tundra and across the continent to within a few miles of the mouth of the Mackenzie river and the Arctic ocean, the white spruce being the most northern species. In the interior northern prairie belt groves of aspen, dense and well developed, skirt the water-courses and form an important wood-supply.
The forests of British Columbia partake of the character of the Pacific forest of the United States, the Coast Range with conifers of magnificent devel opment, including Douglas fir, giant arborvitm, western hemlock, bull-pine and a few others, the Rocky mountain range also of coniferous growth, but of inferior character, large areas being covered with Alpine fir and lodge-pole pine, important as soil cover and for local use in the mining districts, but lacking in commercial value.
For farm forestry, the southern part of Ontario offers the most promising field, for probably 50 per cent of the farm area would be better under wood. Beginnings of forest planting and woodlot manage ment have been made here within the last few years with the aid of the Agricultural College at Guelph.