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HomeMy WebLinkAboutZurich Herald, 1925-01-01, Page 7i DOMINION'S FORESTRY SITUATION of Natural Timber Lands and iliza. tion.. Need for Adequate Protection Sane Ut The, outstanding necessity in 'the forestry situation throughout Canada to -day is, firstly, in the appreetation of what forestry really is; secondly, in the definite and appropriately bal- anced appreciation of several phases of forestry In our practical everyday timber business. Setting aside those who neither know ear care what for- entry is, the public may be divided 'in.; to three classes: first, those that con- ceive of forestry as consisting solely 'of fire protection; second, 'those who considerthat it is tree -planting; third, those who know that it not only em- braces both of these fields of endeav- or; but also far more. Fire protection is of fundamental importance, and only as its problems• are solved for various -districts will it be economically practical to apply the more intensive methods of, forestry proper; fot many years it must neces- sarily absorb the greatest amount of time and energy on the part of the various forest services, yet even when the ideal is reached—fire-proof for- ests, -Canada-wide, we shall not even then have attained the objects of for- estry. More Than Tree -Planting. Nor does forestry .consist merely in tree planting. A brief comparison be- tween tree -planting, as a .means of perpetuating the forest, and the meth- od .of natural regeneration through proper care of existing forests, will give a clearer perspective as to the G- main forestry problems facing Cana- da to -day. Recognizing that under proper management and protection timber has the power of reproducing itself naturally; knowing, on the other hand, that with bare land and with seed it is possible to establish forest growth which in the course of years may be built up into a stand of valu- able timber; it is well to consider which of these two broad methods is the more applicable to Canadian con- ditions. Planting. may entail expenditures varying from $15 to $25 per acre— even more, if heavy transportation harges have'to he met, The definite tangible results secured by this meth- od, however, strongly appeal to the public imagination; so much so, that people are liable to overlook the re- Iative cost. As nowhere in Canada are amounts greater than 3 or 4 •cents per acre being expended in the pro- tection of natural woods (usually very much less than that), it is evident that the use of funds at rates of from $15 to $25 per acre over comparatively small areas would entirely exhaust -forestry appropriations, leaving noth- ing ter the protection and administra- kion of the valuable tirnber resources made available by nature, As a result of intensive utilization. in earlier years, there was necessity for engaging in extensive planting operations in Europe; in Great Britain it is only by such means that the for- est can be re-established.' While the method of artificial reafforestation pro- vides for more rapid and more con- sistent growth, the method has never- thelese inherent disadvantages, 'alto- gether aside from cost, which even in Europe are causing the authorities to, return to methods more closely ap proximating those of nature. This be- ing the experience 1•n eountries where forestry has been practised for gene- ratigns, how foolish it would be for Canada to consider planting as her main problem in providing future tim- ber supplies, Undoubtedly Canada will engage to a considerable extent in plantations, for only by this means can certain neglected areas be brought once more to a state of productivity. The high cost of planting is the price which must be paid for past -careless- ness ,in the treatment of natural for- ests; to those costs we must submit if in some districts we are to have any- thing else than weeds and waste. Hav- ing re-established the forest on such waste lands, however, future methods of forest regulation will aim once more at natural regeneration. Canada's Main Problem. Notwithstanding the local or region- al importance of tree -planting pro- jects, Canada must be careful not to lose sight of the fact that her main problem lies in the rational treatment of natural forest lands. Aside from Prince Edward Island, the Yukon and the Northwest . Territories, Canada's total forest area is nearly 1,250,000 square miles, of which more than 440,- 000 square miles is rated as merchant- able and accessible forest. The logi- cal course, therefore, is to improve fire protection until it is really effec- tive, otherwise circumstances will in- evitably impose production costs of $4, $5, or $6 per cord (double that amount per thousand feet) on ours wood material, Canada must recognize as her main forestry problem the more adequate protection of natural timber lands, and the utilization of the latter under; methods which encourage the repro-, duction of timber. She must abandon l the wasteful methods which are noth- ing more than "timber -mining," and adopt in their place the methods of . cropping timber. Only by such meth- ods may Canada hope to retain for long her position as a contributor to the world's softwood markets. Cont ule-ans Indians Contintie- to Prosper on Farms. The continued advancement and growing prosperity of the Indians of the 'three Prairie Provinces as indi- cated be recent reports of this year's farming operations• confirm the belief which officials of the Department of Indian Affairs have long held, that given a fair opportunity and proper instruction the Indians would in time become self-supporting and independ- ent. Both in grain growing and in cat- tle raising these ewards of tate Govern- ment have shown that they can suc- cessfully compete with the white man,. and they are also rapidly adapting themselves to other lines of farming. The Indians this year sowed ap- ,proximately 70,000 acres of laud. This crop was well put in and notwithstand- ing the unfavorable growing condi- Mils throughout the season, it is con- fidently expected the yield will equal the million -and -a -quarter -bushels re- turn of last year. Between fifty and sixty machines, almost wholly oper- ated by the Indians, were required to thresh the harvest. An ample supply of hay for the Indians' own use has also been put up. Very few cattle losses were suffered by the Indians in the Prairie fro- vincee during the winter, and as the natural increase was good their herds have enlarged, by over 5,000 head. In- cline cattle in Alberta and Saskatche- wan are said to be equal to any grade in these provinces, and last year two Sots entered hi the Winnipeg Stock 1 Feeder Show were awarded first and third prizes. In addition to the cattle, the Indians own over 22,•000 head of horses and about 2,400 head of other I tock. Lookingtowards their future wel- fare, educational work among the In- dians has been expanded. Several new:schools have been built, recently and ethers are cinder oonstruction; Last year the total enrolment of .In- dian school chliareti was 13,723, ap- proximately one-third of these, being in Manitoba; Saskatebewaat, and Al- berta. Agricultural instructors have been employed on some of the reserves, with the result that grain growing and stock raising methods have been greatly improved. Results on Bleed Reserve. During the last two years all the able-bodied Indians on the Blood Re- serve have been removed to and es- tttbiisbed in the southern portion of the reserve, where the sell is well adapted for grain growing, This year they had about 5,000 acres muter •sum- fuer fallow; and over 7,000 acne in wheat which yielded abo'itt 32 bushels per acre and graded No. 1. Their farms vary it size from6175 acr es. These Indians are carrying on their farming 1 operations, without any assistance from the Department in the way of 1 plant and during the last two years; have spent oveer $100,000 in equipment.1 Most of them are well provided with. ; good quality machinery andsuitable buildings. In the outlying ddstricts, however, hunting, trapping, and fish- ing are still followed by the Indians and provide their math source of liveli- hood, and possibly will continue to do so until the hunting grounds are en- croached upon by civilization. The Tight Little Isle. Friend—"Why is England called the tight little isle?" Dry Advocate—"Don't you know they haven't got prohibition there?" Sea Birds. In wallows sof the sea the white birds toss, Silent and. beautiful, on harsh, clean wings, • Dabbled with rose of sunset, gold of dawn, Silver when breakers braid' the moon's blue moss. What loves and what rewards assuage them here, , Unquiet outcasts, barred front nest and tree? ,Has loneliness its own cold ecstasy, Azul every doom the courage _of its fear? —William Alexander Percy. The Snow Bird's Porridge. When winter with its frosty winds The warns air comes to quickly chill, Bread crumbs for hungry little' birds. I scatter en my window sill. They seem to like this dining hall,. When food is so hard to forage, And every morning conte to eat, What I call the Snow Bird's Porridge. Jean :McMichael, ----AND THE WORST IS YET TO CQM eiiln-+b RIGHTFUL INHERITANCES "Do not lament unnecessarily" said a man of mature years recently, "be- cause you cannot leave your :children houses and lands, but remember that all children are entitled to certain in- heritances, unless we are willing to admit that we have deliberately with- held some things from them." What are those rightful inherit- ances? Well, there is little Louise. She seems to be a born hostess and at the age of seven dispenses hospitality as graciously as many an elderly woman. "It is only a natural trait that we have carefully cultivated," her mother explained. "As a tiny tot she liked to 'play party,' and both my husband and I had great admiration for the few friends of ours who extended huspi tality graciously. So I began when she really was a' mere baby to let her serve my guests with a cooling drink that I had previously prepared; ;be• I a would have few :of. her friends in and would wait on them with all the ceremony and style at my ,command., She goon grew wholly unconscious of the party idea and simply treated all our friends with great and sincerecor diality. .-Today she (ices seem, to be an unusually well-trained child, though really it was only a matter of peasure and thoughtfuness to culti- vate the trait." Then there is Bob. "So dependable, so money -wise in his college expendi- tures," a neighbor said to his mother. ;`How did it come about?" "Because he has had financial train- ing since he spent his pennies for candy," his mother replied. "His father had many ways of training him in spending and saving. At the very raining went on throughout his' 'clinger days, and he was•. allowed to ;iandle money for various purposes. But perhaps one of his .best lessons :ane when his father turned over to aim the heating of our house. He was :hen taking care of the furnace; doing it much as the average boy does it. Sometimes he forgot it, and the fire had to be rebuilt, which made it neces- sary,to use kindling and to consume more coal; at other times the ashes 1 were not taken out, and the grate was warped. Instead of scolding and chid- ing because of the neglect, his father simply turned the whole matter over to him. "'Isere,' he explained, 'is the amount that last month's fuel cost. Take It and see what you can do with it this month, What you save will be yours; what it costs more will have to come from your own bank account; but re- member that a furnace and. a fire that are well cared for use less fuel.' "It was surprising what the test did for Bob. It made him feel the eon- fidence that had •been placed in him,' it made him see possibilities in the work that he had never seen before, and it made him grateful that instead of scoldhngs his father was.putting .ethe matter up to him es man to man. ' • 1 -4 "Those are a few of the ways in `which his financial training went, on,: and that is why he knows to -day how; to thandle his limited college money." There is another family—six child- ren,' meagre income, smiling faces, good nature and real politeness. The parents started with a daily progreen of geniality and good will. .They them- selves lived up to the motto, "Speak no ill of any man," and they practiced the golden rule; and because all child- ren are more or lass echoes of older persons their children live lives ot. cheer and peace and contentment—ad- ` mirabie inheritances that they can' never lose. Midnight and Noonday. first he •did not train him to bank, be- I love the clouded midnight in cause a little fellow hardly grasps: the my sweetheart's eyes: idea of banking, but he did train him The midnight in her hair to save for something special, a good toy, a longed -for'• book or a trip to the park; and when he saw the little amount grow into the larger pile he understood what saving meant. When. he played with a good toy and found that it fulfilled its mission he was glad he had not bought the cheap one. The Millions of Gallons of 'Wine. This year's vintage of wines in _ South Australia, is the largest ever produced: It K'tznautns to 10,756,588vateran Although eonftned to bed in a Lont.on hospital,. this armless war gallons, an ,increase of 30 pet cent. aceap]es his time painting really excellent pictures by holding his brush Otter 1 t ear's roduot bti. "..between his teeth. I love to see; But more than those I love and•dearly prize The uclouded mangey splendor Of the summer skies That shine about an when she sings for me. —E. Worth. v as y p t TOWSTORIANS "HOW IT CAN .RE TOLD," SAYS FOREIGN OFFICE. Austen Chamberlain Author. izes Publication of Docurt ments Held Secret Since the Conflict, The British Foreign Cffiee has final- ly decided that "now it oat be told." Following the prevalent fashion among statesmen and chancelleries of shouting all their secrets to the world from their housetops, Austen Cham- berlain, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, has proclaimed that he will permit under the auspices of his de- partment the collection of official docu- mente dealing with the issues that led up to the World War. There was a time before the days of the new diplomacy when governments jealously guarded their secrets, and statesmen, as Mark Twain has done, imparted their confidences to the na- tion only from the grave. But that. day is gone. Now some •of the govern- ments make a practice of publishing all their documents, while statesmen like Foincar, Asquith, Churchill, Beth- mann-Hollweg and the ex -Kaiser, as well as soldiers and bankers, write their memoirs while their deeds still are fresh in people's minds; Their diaries and letters of ambas- sadors feed the world's appetite for fresh sensations. Public opinion in the United Kingdom has come to real- ize that with the other nations throw- ing open their archives and publishing to the world all they know about the war, Great Britain's case is going by default. British historians seeking to write on the momentous years im- mediately preceding the war, have been forced to depend almost entirely on documnts of foreign countries. Tradition Smashed, For the British case they have had to be content with the British "White Paper" that Sir Edward Grey publish- ed in 1914, immediately after the ,out- break of the ware Nevertheless, this step of Chamberlain's represents an extraordinary break with traditions of the Foreign office, in a nation were tradition is held to be peculiarly sac- red. The policy of Downing Street since time immemorial has been to keep its achives closed until documents have reached the age of sixty years, when historians have been permitted to see them. Other power! have been' equal- ly secretive concerning their state papers.. The first break in this tradi- tion came when the Bolshevists took ,r ove: elle - government in . Moscow in 1911 , and proceeded to publish all of their sacred treaties, so damaging to the Allied cause. Nothing like tale ever had been done before, and orthodox statesmen of the old school considered letting people see what their rulers had been doing in their name as an act of unpardonable treachery. But when the German So- icalists seized the reins of govern- ment at the end of the war, In 1918, they followed. the Bolshevist example. In fact, the Germans are still at it. They have issued nineteen volumes of "Die Grosse Politik der Europaischen Kabisette," and they are now prepar- ing repay ing an additional twenty-four volumes. When Ramsay MacDonald formed the first British Socialist government pressure was exerted on him to follow the example of the Socialist ministries in other countries and tell all. He was urged to publish everything in the British Foreign Office. The Labor government did signify Its intention of making furtber publi- cation of British documents, and Mac- Donald, with his characteristic Scotch caution, "was considering the plan" when the general elections inter- vened. Next there stepped in Dr. R. W. Seton -Watson, who occupies the chair of central European history in the University of London --a post which President lelasaryk of Czecho- Slovakia once filled --•-with an appeal to Austen Chamberlain to make the British archives. accessible to students, Sees Injury Done. He warned the Foreign Secretary that "a study of the more important Continental publication, on recent dip- 'lomatic history forces one to the con- elusion that slowly but steadily a very serious injury is being done by the continued silence of the British gov- ernment." Chamberlain in hie reply ffi announced that the Foreign Oce t would publish a collection of docu- ments bearing on the central Euro- pean situation, out of which the war I arose. These documents are to •be edited by G. P, Gooch and H. W. V. Temper- ! ley. It is said in behalf of the British i government that to' "publish the lot" ;is easy to say but not practicable to ;carry out. There must be a selection, , it is insisted, or else the general read- er would be lost in the mass ,of docu- ments referring to the purchase of le- gation quarters, disputes over pass- port formalities, etc. Although there ;nay be in many quarters a lurking •suspicion that the British government is not telling the whole truth, but only what is favor- able to its side, the choice of Coach and Temperley an editors guarantee the lhtpartiality et the work and its freedom from falsification, Gooch's "History of Modern.]flurope, 1878.1919" 'ie a Model ,of fairness, and Carveth Wells, fellow ,of the Royal Geographical Society of England, who has recently made an extensive tour of Lapland, -claims that crime, drunk ertness and anger are unknown up there due to the hard work necessary to live. its freedom from war passions and prejudices is remarkable. Temperley is editor of the official history of the Paris Peace Conference. Simultaneously with the announce- ment of the plan to publish this work, which it is estimated will require a year to finish, Austen Chamberlain, said that the archives of the Foreign Office would be thrown open down to 1878 to historical students. Hitherto only the records down to 1860 have been available. This extension will. disclose the state paper dealing .with the British attitude toward such criti- cal issues as the American Civil War, the Alabama case, the Franco-Prussian and Prussian -Austrian wars and the Russo-Turkish quarrel over Bulgaria. Historians throughout the world should, have plenty of food for con troversy for years to come. The Poet. The barren music of a word or phrase, The futile arts of syllable :and stress, He sought; the poetry of common days He did not guess. The simplest, sweetest rhythms life affords -- 'Unselfish love, true effort truly done,. The tender themes that underlie all words— He knew not one. The human cadence and the subtle chime 'Of little laughters, home and child and wife, He knew not. Artist merely In his rhyme Not in his life, Ohristopher Morley. Stupidity Street. I saw with open eyes• Singing birds sweet Sold in the shops For the people to eat, Sold in the !'hops of Stupidity Street. I sa.y in vision The worm in the wheat And in the shops nothing For people to eat; Nothing for sale in Stupidity Street, —Rai Hodgson. • Modern Japan: In several recent instances distin- guished personages of Japan have set aside marriage arrangements made in their behalf when they were infants: Thereis no more striking token of the determined will of the Japanese to rise above the medievalism of certain social institutions which the West has deprecated. The Thinking That Counts. "All the girls think she's perfectly beautiful." "That's nothing ---what do the men think she 13?"- Jets 3?"Jets in Japan. Jepane a do not care tor dogs and cats as pets in the house. Their fa- vorite is a singing insect, which is kept in a cage which hangs from the eaves of the house. CHnIo for Behavior. bebavier clinic for children has been established in Cleveland. Broadcasting Stations Increase. There are now 560 broadcasting sta tions in the, Unite States and forty in Canada, Perfect edrool Record. One Itotherbatn (tdngiane'n girl has not been' abeent from srbroi or late foe ten years. 1