WS STATE BOARD OF AGIllCULTURE. 



iiii iiiulieuce of Micliigaii farmers, some of wliom have spent the best strength 

 of their manhood in clearing away the woods whicii were once considered as 

 enemies to man, to be smitten with steel and burned with fire. 



But as the marvelous change whicli the demands of trade have wrought has 

 actually carried American coal to the Newcastle market, so the problem of 

 forty years ago, '"'how to get rid of the timber," is to-day completely reversed, 

 and we are confronted with the graver question, ''How shall we restore what 

 we have destroyed? How shall we })rovidc for our old age, and for our chil- 

 dren, the timber which will be required to supply the wants of the future?" I 

 know how common it is to say that the forests of Michigan are practically inex- 

 haustible, and that the timber sujiply will be ample for generations to come ; 

 and no doubt many of you, as you go to your homes and look across your cul- 

 tivated fields to the wood-lot you are saving, will say, "I have enough and to 

 spare." Yet it is a fact, easy of proof, that not only in Genesee county, but in 

 many others of the middle counties of the State, the production of timber for 

 sale lias nearly, if not quite, ceased. The pine forests in this county, with the 

 exce})tion of small tracts in the northeastern corner, have for several years been 

 entirely exhausted. The buyers of oak timber no longer look to us for their 

 supply: and the silence which reigns in the disused mills along our river tells 

 the tale of the final exhaustion of the timber production of this county. It 

 was but a few years ago when a dozen mills in this city were sawing millions of 

 feet of pine logs into boards, which were shipped to the Eastern States to sup- 

 ply the lack of timber there. Thousands of the stately oaks in this county 

 were cut and ship]ied abroad, to be used in the ship-yards on the Clyde for the 

 ribs and planks of English merchantmen ; or in the shape of staves and head- 

 ing, were sent to Spain and Portugal to be made into casks to contain the 

 luscious vintages of those wine-producing lands; while hundreds of acres of 

 woodland have, within a few years past, been converted into charcoal to supply 

 the demands of the iron-smelting works at Detroit. All this consumption of 

 timber has mainly occurred within the memory of the youngest of us here. 

 The history of the timber of Genesee county will, in a few years, be the history 

 of other well-timbered counties lying to the north of us, where there is still a 

 large area covered with trees. "With the ever-increasing demand lor lumber to 

 be used in building and manufactories, which our lumbermen arc only too 

 eager to supply for present gain at the expense of future wants, it does not 

 require a very proi^hetic eye to discern the day not far distant when the manu- 

 facture of lumber will be practically at an end in jMichigan, by reason of the 

 exhaustion of the supply ; and the i)eople of this State will be obliged to import 

 at great expense, as is now done in the Eastern States, the lumber necessary 

 for building and mechanical })urp()ses. 



How great tlie consumption of lumber will be iu tiio future it is dilUcult to 

 estimate. With the teeming population of the country rapidly increasing in 

 number, the necessity of constantly building new houses, barns, shops, and 

 factories, and reconstructing the old ones, with the rapidly increasing demand 

 for agricultural and mechanical implements which require the best timber for 

 their construction, with the enormous consumjition of wood for railroad ties, 

 fuel, bridges, and cars, with tiie heavy drafts made upon our forests to furnish 

 ship timljer to accommodate the constantlv growing toriuage of our lake trans- 

 jwrtation service, and with tlie numberless ways in which wood will be em- 

 ployed by the ever-increasing ingenuity of man, it is only too easy to realize 

 that before many years have passed, Michigan forests will be wholly inadequate 



