“except where the timber has been destroyed by fire, there is a good growth of spruce, tamarack, balsam, poplar and white birch, but it does not extend far back, the country generally being open sphagnum swamps with small scattered tamarack and black spruce trees.” Doctor Bell, at one of his examinations before the Senate committee of 1887, produced as an exhibit a branch of the Banksian pine (_Pinus Banksiana_), often called the jackpine and scrub pine. This is about the only tree in North America which we can call strictly Canadian. Both its northern and southern limits are practically in Canada. It extends thousands of miles from the southeast in New Brunswick to the northwest, in a belt, throughout the Dominion. In height this tree grows one hundred feet and upwards. Doctor Bell had seen them six feet in circumference. The largest trees that he had seen of this species were on the upper waters of the southern branches of Albany river. In general, trees attain their greatest perfection in the centre of their geographical distribution. Sometimes they degenerate into brush, at the outside edge of the territory in which they grow. As you go north, south, east or west, they may become smaller and smaller until they die out, but this is not the case with all kinds of trees. The Banksian pine is not particularly valuable for lumber. It resembles the red pine; it has a coarse, distinct grain and can be used for many purposes. In England it would be used for the manufacture of fashionable bedroom furniture. It is something like the pine of Florida and Georgia, which has been used for some years past in England in the manufacture of furniture. It would BECOME AN ARTICLE OF COMMERCE if means of communication with the northern forests were provided. The Banksian pine would make good ties, telegraph poles, and timber for general purposes, besides fuel. In groves it grows very straight, but it is more likely to be branchy than red pine. Doctor Bell had seen hundreds of them in groves, affording logs of from twenty to twenty-two inches in diameter—two or three logs to a tree. It grows very rapidly. He had seen it, in his own experience, within fifteen years, growing to be useful trees; whole tracts had been covered with good timber. Asked while giving evidence before the Senate committee of 1887 whether the shores of James bay and Hudson bay are wooded, Doctor Bell explained that on the west side to Seal river, a little beyond Churchill, commercial timber could be obtained from all the rivers flowing in from the south, and jackpine from some, and spruce and tamarack from all the rivers of James bay. This would be all of merchantable size, not extraordinarily large, but plenty of it. The spruce might be described as generally of a small size, but making up in quantity in the number of logs that might be obtained. The tamarack, though, is large.