FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 73 



boygan, green block wood sold from farmers' wagons at |2.n0 per cord, 

 and this in a city once surrounded by forests, containing today the lar- 

 gest pile of sawdust in the State, and whose people five years ago could 

 get their wood free by hauling away from the mills, or by going to the 

 forests and cutting for themselves. All over northern Michigan the 

 price of wood for fuel has been steadily advancing, until it is a fortunate 

 man who is the owner of a wood-lot. The successful reforesting of any 

 area contemplates a plan that requires at a certain period a thinning 

 out process and this thinning is done at a time when the trees taken out 

 are of a size fit for fuel. On some of the poorest classes of lands it may 

 be impossible to grow anything but Jack pine and that only good for fuel 

 purposes. Should the destruction of timber continue in the future, as it 

 has in the past few years, it will be a great boon to be near enough the 

 Forestry Reserve to take advantage of its fuel products. 



In short, the Michigan Forestry Reserve with proper fostering care 

 from the State is destined to become of great benefit to the surrounding 

 country and its people. More, it will be the one place where tired 

 humanity may find rest and get close to nature, and this appeals to the 

 people of the State at large. The Reserve should become the asylum or 

 retreat for all kinds of game, as it is now the home of a few specimens 

 of most of the wild animals natural to the State. 



Far exceeding the pecuniary benefits to be received from a proximity 

 to the Reserve will be the comfort afforded by the forest and the com- 

 munion with the outside world attracted to the Reserve. 



THE FARM WOOD LOT. 



BY HON. GEORGE B. HORTOX^ FRUIT RIDGE. 



The people of Michigan, being accustomed to forest destruction, it is 

 not an easy matter to create much interest in so radical a change as for- 

 est preservation indicates. 



Forest protection and encouragement is and must be to a considerable 

 extent, a generous work for the benefit of those who come after us, and 

 for the commonwealth at large. People are so intensely practical that 

 self-interest and present benefit are too apt to become controlling fac- 

 tors, in most matters which embrace money values. Up to the present 

 time, the available money there was in the trees and the productive 

 value of the land the trees stood upon, have been the chief considera- 

 tions in handling timber land. Therefore, no notions or definite plans, 

 on the part of the citizens of the State, looking toward a general encour- 

 agement of forest growth, exist. 



Even on farms where the process of chopping and clearing as a busi- 

 ness has ceased, and the remaining few acres of wood land are intended 

 as permanent forests, very few farmers are acting along lines of pro- 

 tecting, encouraging and perpetuating timber growth. Although we see 

 an occasional farm wood-lot which gives evidence that its owner has 

 ceased to work from the edge inward, felling every tree great and small, 

 10 



