waking up to what it will have lost when the forests are gone, and everywhere a cry is rising for legislation to encourage planting, discourage waste, and keep the crop within the increase. Let us then see what has been done, and in our survey note the principal trees that need protection.

In Canada a start has been made. In Quebec no pine can now be cut less than a foot in diameter. In the North-West Territories and Manitoba, the Dominion Government has taken over the forests, but in the other provinces they are the property of the local governments who own and dispose of the uncleared tracts. To fell timber a license is granted, and a fixed duty is payable on all logs cut.

mill can get through in a year is enormous, and the total output of the North American sawmills is almost incredible. Some years ago it was calculated that Chicago used a thousand million feet of lumber, six hundred million shingles, and one hundred and twenty-one million laths, or altogether sufficient timber to make a "pig-tight" fence enclosing an area double that of our globe! In the three great timber states-Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin-there was a production of ten thousand million feet, enough to load a railway train eight thousand four hundred miles long, or to form the full cargo of fifty thousand of the vessels on the lakes. On the Canadian side the rate of consumption will soon be as great. The growth of a trade is generally a subject for congratulation; it may be doubted, however, if the growth of the timber trade is not a subject for alarm. It takes one hundred and fifty years to grow a pine-tree; it averages as many minutes to fell it, float it, and saw into lengths. "Easy come, easy go," is the motto of the timberman; and not only of the timberman, but of most of his relations. To clear a potato-patch, a settler will fire a tree, and the fire will be allowed to rage unchecked for miles and miles. On the Pacific slope hundreds of square miles have thus wastefully been denuded of their wood. In Canada, picnic parties have lighted a fire to boil the kettle, left it alight when done with, and it has raged over thousands of

acres.

The United States have not got much further than the encouragefairly under way. The waste in their ment of planting, but the subject is huge territory has been greater than elsewhere, though the wealth still left is enormous.

That trees affect the climate and thereby the production of the land is an accepted fact. The denudation of the Indian and Chinese hill slopes is the chief cause of the famines in the plains. The destruction of the forests round the gathering grounds of the Volga has reduced the volume of that river, and lowered the level of the Caspian Sea. The world is

3

France was one of the first countries to encourage forest protection, and the wise enactments of Sully bore good fruit down to the days of the Revolution. In 1860 legislation was resumed, and the result we see in the Nancy School of Forestry, which is one of the best in Europe. In Switzerland the management of the forests rests with the several cantons, and very stringent rules are in force. As long ago as the fifteen century the Venetian and Genoese Republics had their forest laws, which were suffered to become obsolete, with the usual results. One of the curiosities of Italian tree culture has been the introduction of the Australian eucalyptus to the Roman marshes, whose climate it greatly improved. Germany is the land of forests and of forest schools. In the estate maps every tree is recorded and felled in rotation.

has

E wonder

how many

readers of this Magazine are aware of the fact that right here in our own province a wonderful effort along missionary lines is being conducted among the lumbermen and lonely settlers in the frontier districts, by the Ontario Women's Christian Temperance Union? The saddest part of the story is the appalling need that exists for just such effort, and the need will remain until further reinforcements in the shape of missionaries and means to equip and send them forth are forthcoming. We would that some who read this article will be impressed with the fact that God is calling them to help in this great work of building up ramparts of Christian defence around the lumbermen who are hewing our forests and the miners who are winning from the bowels of the earth the treasures hidden therein, but for whose spiritual and moral betterment little or no effort has been put forth until within recent years.

Its Inception.-Nearly fourteen years ago the White Ribboners of Ontario became interested in the

MISS AGNES SPROULE,

W. C. T. U. Missionary to the Lumber Camps.

men

who each winter filled the lumber camps of the province. The need seemed appalling; hundreds of men congregating together, cut off from church privileges or spiritual instruction of any kind. This whitening harvest, with not even a single reaper in all its broad expanse, was brought to the attention of the Ontario Provincial W. C. T. U. by Mrs. Agnes Hunter, of

Pembroke, whose interest had been aroused in the godless conditions surrounding the men who went to the lumber camps on the Ottawa River. Mrs. Hunter's husband had large interests in lumber concerns, and through his office she was able to send to the camps good literature and comfort-bags. She found these so heartily appreciated that she came to the Provincial Convention to implore its membership to adopt the work as a department and help her in supplying these isolated and tempted men with good reading matter, and, where possible, with bandages, court-plaster, salve, etc.

Agnes

their joint parish covers an area of 70,000 square miles, and in it is included nearly 100,000 souls. But "what are these among so many," and from our own countrymen comes with ever-increasing earnestness the Macedonian call for help.

Miss Sproule and Her Work.For the first four years that Miss Sproule was engaged in this work her efforts were confined to the settlers' cabins and to little meetings whenever and wherever they could be held. But a year ago she felt the call from the camps so imperative that she must needs obey, and so on February 2nd, 1903, she began to visit the different camps in her district, sowing the good seed of God's Word in uncultivated soil, for in none of the camps visited by Miss Sproule during her first winter among them (with the exception of a Quaker missionary from the States, who visited Camp 2, of the Pigeon River Lumber Co.) had any other Protestant service been Sproule tells of the cordial welcome held. Wherever she has gone Miss extended to her, and the utmost respect tendered her by the men. Perhaps they read in the strong, kindly face the story of one who walks and talks with God. Herein lies the secret of this brave woman's courage and devotion to the work. The report received last year from this dauntless missionary reads as follows:

The work thus started in such simple fashion has broadened and deepened, and now for seven years a missionary has been visiting all the year round amongst the six hundred lumbermen's camps in the Muskoka and Nipissing DistrictsMr. Leckie, of Huntsville-and for about five years Miss Sproule, of Fort William, has been going up and down through the tiny settlements scattered throughout Algoma, preaching the Gospel, delivering temperance addresses, forming temperance organizations, and taking many hundreds upon hundreds of pledges. Miss Sproule has entered scores of places only to find that hers was the first voice ever raised in public prayer in that place since her first visit. she began work, there were three When unions in Algoma; through her instrumentality there are now fifteen, and the work these societies have done in creating temperance sentiment and in enforcing temperance laws can never be estimated.

Though the efforts of these two missionaries have been singularly crowned with the blessing of the Most High, the work is fettered and cramped for the lack of more missionaries. Need we wonder that such is the case when we learn that

"I have spent 158 days in travelling, visited 70 places, held 80 public meetings, have spoken in public schools, Sunday-schools, at church services, social gatherings, young people's meetings, and wherever there was an opportunity to do the work of a missionary. Visited, in the lonely scattered settlements, 450 homes. All this necessitated 2,200 miles of travel by rail; 605 by boat, canoe, etc., rode 220 miles, and walked 250 miles. Taking into account the trip in Lower Ontario in the interests of the work, the total number of miles travelled would be 5,000. Besides this were sent out 774 parcels and boxes, containing besides