100 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



tivated fruit are well worth considering, and Juneberries, currants, and 

 wild gooseberries, some of which have established a good claim to a place 

 among our cultivated fruits. Doubtless it would take many generations to 

 determine the capabilities of some of these, but it would seem desirable 

 that their systematic study should be undertaken without further delay. 

 The experiment stations exist for just such work. The universities, unfor- 

 tunately, as a rule, have neither land, time, nor money available for the 

 purpose. 



One of the possibilities of our Michigan flora lies in the restoration, in 

 some reasonable degree, of its once almost boundless forest wealth. A 

 single conifer has contributed more to the wealth of this state than any 

 other product of its soil or mines or lakes. There will always be thousands 

 of acres of land within the state exactly adapted to its growth and ill- 

 adapted to other purposes. 



Judging by what has already been accomplished on many wornout New 

 England farms, there is no reason to doubt that, with a minimum of initial 

 expense, and with hardly any subsequent outlay, the barren tracts of 

 Michigan that are constantly reverting to the state because their owners 

 can not pay the taxes, would bear a famous crop of pine in fifty years or 

 less, worth more than everything else that could be painfully dug out of 

 the soil at many times the cost. It is not to be expected that the state will 

 very soon undertake the raising of pine timber for use fifty years hence, 

 but it may well provide for such a series of careful experiments that, half 

 a century from now, those who come after us will know, as they do in 

 Europe today, how long it will take and what it will cost to produce a 

 thousand feet of a given quality of wood, and by what method it is to be 

 accomplished. 



The possibilities of our flora are not all of a hopeful character. We 

 have become painfully aware, even within a few years past, of the capacity 

 of foreign weeds for entering and actually taking possession of the land. 

 There is no doubt that, in spite of these vile intruders, the land will be 

 tilled and the harvest gathered as it has been in the past, but it is a pitiful 

 spectacle to see the weary tiller of the soil entering upon this unequal and 

 well-nigh hopeless contest with a ubiquitous enemy. Whatever may be 

 thought of the duty of the state in regard to any other suggested lines of 

 action, there is no possible doubt that existing laws ought to be rigidly 

 enforced. With this, as with other public nuisances, every good citizen 

 ought to stand with every other on the common ground of absolute 

 extermination when it can be accomplished, restriction to the narrowest 

 limits meantime, and, until it is thoroughly cleaned out, a relentless fight. 



He would be a bold prophet who should undertake to predict the 

 changes through which our Michigan flora must inevitably pass as the 

 decades and centuries roll slowly by. What new arrivals there will be 

 from foreign shores we can not even guess. What losses we shall sustain 

 through the extermination of indigenous species we may more easily 

 imagine, but are in no position to enumerate. What welcome restorations 

 and additions there may be are alike unknown. But there can be no 

 doubt that, in the future, even more than in the past, the hand of man will 

 be a controlling factor. Whether in other directions man fixes his fate, 

 or his fate fixes him, it is certain that, within pretty wide limits, the future 

 of our flora will be determined by the character of our immigration, the 

 thrifty or careless habits of our farmers and fruitgrowers, destructive or 

 conservative instincts of botanical collectors, the occurrence of forest fires. 



