In recent years a great deal of interest has been aroused in connection with the establishing of protection forests. By these are meant areas of woodland or bush which form the watersheds of streams and rivers used for recreational purposes and especially those on which water supplies for domestic use are dependent. In the advocacy of such areas it may be that the pendulum of enthusiasm for conservation has swung too far in one direction, but this is usually the case where reformers of any kind set out to warn the public of an approaching calamity. And it is not an exaggeration to state that if deforestation is permitted to continue on such areas, as it has done in the past, that it will have a calamitous effect on certain of the rural communities in southern Ontario at least.