70 STATE BOARD OP AGRICULTURE. 



The greater values being at first found in the pine, we find that variety 

 of timber being cut first. Now follows the hard-wood^, until the great 

 forest has nearly disappeared, and we find these lands again coming back 

 to the State as tax la-nds. As a State we have been ac (niriuo; these old 

 choppings until much more than half of the lands in some of these north- 

 ern counties are now on the books in the oflflce of the Auditor General as 

 State tax lands. This has been brought about by the refusal of the prot 

 prietors to pay taxes after they have stripped the lands, and the area thus 

 acquired is increasing year after year. The largest area of this class of 

 lands would be embraced in the territory covered by Clare, Gladwin, 

 Missaukee, Eoscommon, Ogemaw, Iosco, Kalkaska, Crawford, Oscoda, 

 Alcona, Otsego, Montmorency, Alpena and Cheboygan counties. The lands 

 held for taxes in these fourteen counties comprise a total of about two 

 million acres, and much of it is in blocks of entire sections and in many 

 instances entire townships. This great tract has already produced a forest 

 of w^orld wide fame, and it has been clearly demonstrated that land that 

 has once produced timber will do so again; and in fact we find that 

 Nature is doing this already when given a chance. Evidences of Dame 

 Nature's ability to hide her scars are not wanting, for wherever we find 

 an old windfall or cutting that has escaped continuous annual burnings^ 

 we find a fine second growth of timber, much of it already large enough 

 to be valuable for manufacturing purposes. From examinations made 

 in old wind-falls and choppings in these northern counties we find that 



TIMIJER OF VALUABLE SORTS WILL GROW 



to a merchantable size in from twenty-five to forty years time, without 

 any care whatever. An acre of this second growth timber, measured in 

 an old wind-fall, which in the early fifties was noted by the government 

 surveyors as being burned over and grown up to briars and underbrush, 

 contained 383 trees from four to eighteen inches in diameter and made up 

 of the most valuable varieties of hardwood, being mostly sugar maple, 

 rock and grey elm, basswood and white ash. 



Within the boundaries of the fourteen counties above enumerated, is 

 located the most beautiful and bountiful water supply that can be found 

 in a state that is everywhere noted for having the best of everything. 

 Thus in Eoscommon county we have the Houghton and Higgins lakes, in 

 Otsego we have Otsego lake, and each of the other counties is plentifully 

 dotted with small, deep lakes, fed from springs, and from their depths 

 flash back the silver and gold from the choicest of the finny tribes. These 

 numerous reservoirs, containing the purest water on the globe, give rise 

 to nearly all the river systems north of the Saginaw and Grand Eiver 

 valleys. " We there find the Manistee river flowing from the lakes in 

 Otsego, Kalkaska and Eoscommon counties, with its outlet in Lake Mich- 

 igan, and the Au Sable river rising in the same territory, but flowing 

 easterly to Lake Huron. Higgins and Houghton lakes unite their waters 

 and send them down to Lake Michigan by way of the Muskegon river. 

 The numerous small lakes of Montmorency county find their outlet in 

 the Thunder Bay river and its tributaries and reach Lake Huron at 

 Alpena. To the north of all these, with its western terminal near the 

 center of Antrim county and extending eastward to the center of Mont- 

 morency, we find the greatest water-shed of the lower peninsula, and 



