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introduced at the last legislature, assigned to the committee on appropriations, and perished there before being allowed a chance on the floor of the house. It needs no prophetic eye to recognize that the trend of events will lead to the adoption of some such plan in a not distant future.

The following figures received by the courtesy of the State Department of Forestry seem important and should accompany the foregoing discussion.

FIRE LOSSES IN 1908.

Number of acres burned over

398,855

Number of feet (board measure) of logs burned

10,216,032

Number of feet (board measure) of sawed lumber burned

931,350

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NUMBER FEET MERCHANTABLE TIMBER DESTROYED BY FIRE DURING 1908.

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Number of acres cut over to be used for farming purposes.

5.225

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Number of cords used in the manufacture of alcohol or acid

135,008

Total number of cords of cord wood cut .....

385,139

Number of feet (board measure) cut for mine props
Number of feet (board measure) cut for railroad ties
Number of feet (board measure) cut for telegraph poles

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STATE FORESTS IN MICHIGAN

BY FILIBERT ROTH,

Professor of Forestry, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich.

Michigan is a part of the Great Lakes region, which extends from the State of New York, west and northwest, far beyond the confines of the United States. This region is a broad expanse of level country without high mountains, but dotted by lakes and swamps and traversed in all directions by numerous streams.

Michigan is made up of two peninsulas, the "upper and lower," formed by Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron and Erie, and shares the general character and topography of the Great Lakes region. Lakes Michigan and Huron are about five hundred and seventyfive feet above the sea, Lake Superior about six hundred feet, and the lands slope from these lakes to an elevation of four hundred to six hundred feet above the lakes themselves. In the upper peninsula the "Porcupine" and "Huron" mountains, and other groups and chains of picturesque hills, skirt the "Father of Lakes," and rise, in a few points, to a maximum altitude of nearly two thousand feet above sea level.

The climate of Michigan varies from a mild temperate one in which peaches and the grapevine thrive to a cold frosty one, where the snowy winters are long and frost appears in nearly every month of the year. Generally Michigan lies between the yearly isotherm of 40° and that of 50° F.; the summer is warm, but rarely hot, and the winters generally cold. From the standpoint of tree growth, Michigan lies in a climatic transition zone, in which such trees as the tulip poplar, chestnut, sycamore, sassafras, walnut, hickory and others find their northern limits, while the northern pines, spruce, cedar, and tamarack have their southern limit within the state.

An average rainfall of about thirty to thirty-five inches, quite well distributed throughout the year, enables the forest trees to occupy all parts of the state.

Nearly all of the land area of Michigan is overlain with a mass of glacial drift, so that the soil is generally very deep, and variable

in composition and character. Over large areas this soil is a deep, coarse sand, unfit for agriculture and covered everywhere with the typical "pinery" vegetation.

In keeping with the surface geology, the generally level character of the country and the irregular deposits of drift, the drainage is imperfect, and in nearly all parts of the state there occur large and small lakes and swamps, the latter generally old ponds or lakes filled, or in process of filling.

Michigan was a forest, and the white pine its greatest tree. Not Maine, but Michigan should have been called the "White Pine State." There were practically no real prairies in Michigan. The few openings, such as "Prairie Ronde," were mere holes burned into the great forest and maintained by fire. A much larger area of open lands existed in form of grass marshes and open bogs.

The forest, in its original form, may well be divided into a southern "hardwoods" forest, without pine, and a northern forest, in which the pine formed a conspicuous part of the composition. This latter again divides itself, naturally, into the northern hardwoods, largely of maple and beech, with hemlock and some pine, and stocked on the loam and clay lands, and into the "pinery" proper, or pure forest of pine, limited to the poorer sandy lands.

Throughout these three great divisions, or types, of forest, there existed the swamp woods, occupying the poorly drained depressions, and varying from a few acres to several square miles in extent.

The southern hardwood forest of Michigan was part of the great hardwoods region of the Ohio Valley; it occupied approximately what is now the three southern tiers of counties, was practically without pine and spruce, but varied in its composition considerably according to soil and drainage. The well-drained, rolling lands were covered with oakwoods, made up of oak (red, white, black and scarlet oak), with variable mixture of hickory, walnut, butternut, elm, beech, ash, basswood, maple, cherry, blue beech, hornbeam and others.

In places, especially on gravelly slopes, old stands of these oakwoods assumed the appearance of parkwoods and became wellknown as "oak openings."

The valleys and flats, notably the old "lakebeds" were largely maple and beech woods with a heavy mixture of elm and ash, and

but little of oak, hickory or the walnut. Over large areas these flats were poorly drained and swamp-like, and were often known locally as "elm and ash swamps," these two kinds of trees usually predominating on such ground.

The northern hardwoods were maple and beech woods with more or less of conifers, hemlock, white pine and balsam; and in some localities, notably the upper peninsula, with some spruce and white cedar or arbor vitæ. These northern hardwoods varied considerably with soil and drainage, in some tracts the elm and basswood appeared as predominant timber, but generally they were practically without oak, hickory or walnut.

The "pinery" proper, i. e., the forests of pine on the sandy lands were practically without any hardwoods of merchantable size. Generally there appeared a sprinkling of poplar (aspens), white birch, scrubby maple and oak. On the flats and moister situations and on the better sands this pine forest was largely of white pine with some Norway or red pine; on poorer sands it was largely or all Norway pine and on the poorest sands it was stocked with jack pine. Older stands of these pines, especially the Norway pine, were almost without undergrowth or brush, so that in some of these a team could be driven for miles without a road. Of the jack pine lands, large tracts were kept clear by fire and thus became the "jack pine plains," evidently an effort on the part of the Indian to provide an open, prairie-like summer-camp, free from mosquitoes and flies and supplying, incidentally, a large amount of delicious fruit in the crops of the huckleberry.

The swamp woods were composed chiefly of tamarack and cedar in variable proportions. Usually they contained a sprinkling of spruce which predominated on the bogs, and along the edges a mixture of pine, balsam, aspen, ash and maple. This swamp timber was always small compared to the big pine and hardwoods of the dry lands.

These were the great forests of Michigan of a century ago, and beautiful forests they were. Large oak, often 300 years old and more, furnished shelter and food for game. Hickory, walnut, and thicket of hazel supplied the natives with nuts; plum, cherry, wild grape, raspberry, blackberry and huckleberry furnished fruit in abundance. Deer, bear, wolf, fox, beaver, wildcat, muskrat, squirrel and rabbit were all abundant and relatively easy to secure.

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