MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS. 701 



sary to be done to make the fruit crop pay. Ir is the educated farmer 

 who is now going to the front, and the bookman is leaving the farmer 

 who takes no agricultural paper and snorts at education far in the rear. 



There are two classes of farmers who have no use for the light soil, and 

 who firmly believe that the soil of the farms they live on is the best on 

 earth. One is the possessor of the rich black prairie soil of Illinois and 

 other Western States, and the other is the owner of heavy clay land such 

 as is found in the interior of Michigan and in Eastern States. 



These two classes of farmers are deeply prejudiced in favor of lands 

 such as they own. If told that there was a stretch of land along the 

 east shore of Lake Michigan that was drift soil, formed by the action of 

 the "Great Lake'' in receding its waters, in some places heavy clay and 

 in others light sand, and that year in and year out, owing to climatic 

 reasons, this fruit belt section would earn more agricultural wealth than 

 where he lives, neither one of these classes of farmers would believe it. 



Except in Africa there is no large continental area of land that has 

 big lakes in it like these Great Lakes of the United States. Here is 

 a strip of land, of drift soil, extending from New Buffalo to Mackinaw 

 along the east shore of Lake Michigan, a distance back of from twenty 

 to forty miles, that has peculiar climatic conditions. There is nothing 

 like it elsewhere in the United States. I will briefly state some of the 

 conditions of this fruit belt. Increase of humidity in warm weather 

 means an increase of sensible heat: in cold weather, the reverse happens. 

 The actual temperature may be one thing, and the sensible tempera- 

 ture (as to feeling) may be another thing, owing to this increase of 

 humidity. Winds tend to the production of humidity. Vast bodies of 

 water like the Great Lakes situated in the midst of large areas of land, 

 have a climatic influence on shore territory, the full extent of which is not 

 known. Continental or large tracts of land without lakes become more 

 heated in summer and colder in winter. The climate on the Eastern 

 shore of Lake Michigan in this fruit belt section is better than on the 

 western shore of this lake as to fruit growing, its continental area of 

 land lying to the west of Lake Michigan, producing a different climatic 

 situation. When you understand that you can take the whole of New 

 •Jersey, Maryland, and Deleware and drop these three states into Lake 

 Michigan, and that the winds are south-west across this Lake in the 

 fruit-growing season as a rule, then you can understand how the tempera- 

 ture is equalized on this shore. 



While the soil is sandy as a rule, being a drift soil, yet there are alka- 

 line substance in it that promote vegetation. That the lower peninsula 

 of Michigan was once under the waters of the Great Lakes is apparent 

 from the following reasons: there extends through to Mackinaw north 

 and south in the center of the State a higher elevation than the other 

 lines of these lakes which surround it, and from this higher elevation. 

 streams flow east and west into Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, the 

 soil is what is called drift by geologists, and is caused by deposit from the 

 waters of these lakes. This soil is more or less impregnated with 

 gypsum particles, showing that at the bottom of these great lakes there 

 must exist great areas of gypsum rock, which the waters have disinter- 

 grated these particles from and mixed in this deposit. This is also shown 

 by the out-cropping of gypsum rock near Grand Rapids, and in other 

 portions of this shore line. The relation between weather and climate 



