THE FOREST. 387 



We all know that our forests are of great value aud that they are 



RAPIDLY DISAPPEARING. 



Maine was but a few years ago a great lumbering State. Her valuable pine is 

 now about all gone. The same is true of Northern New York. In Pennsylva- 

 nia, at the i:)resent rate, all the good timber will be gone in three years. Of 

 course some of it will be kept longer. Michigan is now the great headquarters 

 for valuable lumber. Two-thirds of the best in the markets of New York, 

 Philadelphia and Boston goes from Michigan. Some of it goes to Germany aud 

 Great Britain. 



Besides the demand at the East, Michigan supplies immense quantities of 

 lumber to the cities and prairies of the southwest. 



No other country of its size on this continent or any other has so much hard 

 and soft wood valuable for hewing and for boards as the northern half of the 

 southern peninsula of Michigan, 



THE FORESTS OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



It is human nature for us all to praise our ovrn country. Even the poor men 

 of Lapland and Iceland do this. To comprehend the relative importance of 

 Michigan timber, let us take a glance at the forests of Great Britain. Great 

 Britain and Ireland contain 121,200 square miles of land, Michigan 60,000, a 

 little less than one-half as much as Great Britain. She ha? one species of bass- 

 wood not so good as ours ; one maple not over twenty feet high ; one cherry, 

 from ten to twenty feet high ; one small ash, two elms, two poplars, one beech, 

 which groAVS very large but not very high (sometimes ninety feet around), one 

 small white birch, one species of pine, by no means a match for our wliite pine, 

 a sj)ecies of oak which sometimes grov\'s to a great size (seventy feet in circum- 

 ference). But the trees in many places there do not grow as thickly as they do 

 here. They branch out low. They are magnificent trees for a park, a kind of 

 second growth, but not very good for logs of hewn or sawed timber. 



Great Britain, we see, has about ten species of trees natives of her soil. Mich- 

 igan, Avith half the territory, has about ninety species, nine times as great a 

 variety. Of course so old a country has introduced a great many species from 

 other climates. Great Britain has no white wood (tulip tree), no white or red 

 cedar, no walnuts or hickories. Michigan has six species of maple of tree size, 

 a basswood, a white Avood, honey locust, Kentucky coffee tree, two cherries, a 

 pepperidge, five species of ash, a sassafras, three elms, a hackberry, a mulberry, 

 a buttouAvood, black Avalnut, butternut, six hickories, about tAvelve oaks, a chest- 

 nut, a beech, G.\q tree birches, four or six AvilloAvs of tree size, six 2:)oplars, fiA'e 

 or more pines, four spruces, one larch, one arbor vitse, and a red cedar. 



THE FORESTS OP SOUTH AMERICA. 



I have ne\-er had the pri\'ilege of a visit to tropical climes, but I have read the 

 remarks of others who haA"e. I have lately had a long visit from Dr. J. B. 

 Steere, of our OAvn State, Avho has spent over five years in a trip around the 

 Avorld, passing across South America in the Avidest place, along the Amazon, 

 visiting some of China, the tropical islands cast and south of the Ilindostan, 

 Egypt, France, Great Britain, etc. During all these five years he has been col- 

 lecting birds, land shells, plants, etc. He has been in the forests a great deal 

 of the time. He is a very good botanist. In all his travels he saAV no forests to 

 compare Avith the grandeur of onr northern forests of pines. In the trojiics 

 there are G,000 species of trees on a territory Avhere Ave should find sixty species, 

 100 times as great a variety there as here. There might there be one, tAA-o or 



