Although the home government retains the veto power, the supreme jurisdiction and various other powers, and although apparently, by the appointment of officials, its influence is guarded, practically the party management as exercised in Great Britain prevails, and independence from imperial influence and from the home government is continually increasing. In regard to the crownlands, including forests, this division as well as this relationship becomes important. Each provincial government except those of the three middle provinces administers the crownlands within its boundaries in its own way, yet on similar lines, while the Dominion government controls only the lands located outside of the provinces together with those of the middle provinces and the so-called railway belt in British Columbia. These latter lands were mostly acquired by purchase from the Hudson’s Bay Company, the Company relinquishing its territorial rights in 1868, and the transfer being completed in 1870 upon payment of £300,000. 1. _Forest Conditions._ The forest area has at various times and by various authorities been roughly estimated as between one and a quarter and over one and three quarter million square miles, which would make the forest per cent. at least over 32. But this includes the open woodlands of the northern territory and of the prairies, which, while of great importance to the local settlers, are for the most part probably or surely not of commercial value. Commercially valuable forests, actually or prospectively, are found almost only in British Columbia and in the old provinces, the two forest regions separated, just as in the United States, by a forestless region, except that north of the prairie region a continuous belt of open woodland extends to near the mouth of the Mackenzie River. A careful examination of the sources of information has led the writer to the conclusion that less than 350,000 square miles or round 200 million acres would cover fully the commercially valuable forest land, although the wooded area of the provinces in which the commercial timber occurs is stated officially as around 450 million acres, two-fifths of which is to be found in British Columbia. Indeed, although we are accustomed to look upon Canada as a great forest country, it really possesses about 60 per cent. less commercial forest area than the United States, and about one-quarter of the mature timber of that country. It will be understood that all such statistics are merely rough estimates, the data being slim, and eked out by conjectures based on geographical conditions which predicate the character of the country. Most unreasonable speculations and calculations[16] as to amount of timber standing and value have been made on impossible assumptions.