We have a circular protesting against a duty on foreign lumber from Mr. M. C. Read, of Hudson, Ohio. In it he says :

" In the Dominion of Canada are millions of acres of land which, from the nature of the soil, must be perpetually devoted to forest growth. They constitute the natural sources of a supply of lumber for the productive arable and pasture lands to the south of them, in the United States as well as in Canada.

" The time is at hand when we shall be wholly i dependent upon this source of supply, or upon the artificial growth of timber in our own country, if the present rate of destruction of our forests is continued.

"The increased price of lumber, caused by a tariff upon importations, benefits only the lumbermen. It tends to the development of no other industry. It does not increase by a single foot the amount of lumber we are capable of producing, but, on the contrary, diminishes the amount by tempting the lumbermen to now cut trees which, if spared would rapidly increase in value, while it imposes a needless burden upon every man in the country who is not directly interested in the profits of lumbering.

" It imposes a burden upon the people now, and promises a greater burden in the future, when they become wholly dependent upon the foreign supply.

" If the tariff upon lumber is continued, the work of our Forestry Associations will be vain and fruitless; for pecuniary considerations and the immediate money results will control those who own forests which can be converted into salable lumber."

We are not disposed to say much about tariffs in the Gardeners' Monthly, because we wish to eschew everything that bears on partisan politics. People can get all they want of this elsewhere.

But we may say without prejudice to this unpar-tisan attitude, that we mistake the American Forestry Association, if its work is simply the preservation of old forests. At one hundred years old a forest is ready for the axe. The lumber decreases in value every year the tree stands after that. It is far better for the country that where there is no chance to get a two hundred-year-old forest to market, the wood should be girdled or burnt off, and the land put to agricultural uses. Forestry associations should bend their efforts towards planting new forests instead of merely protecting old ones; and if in this view a duty on lumber should encourage forest planting among us, it may be well worth even a Forestry Association considering how far it would be judicious in the nation to go.

It is now generally conceded that it would be quite proper to "protect" forestry planting, but just what that protection should be, we must leave to the politicians.