FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 61 



THE FORESTRY PROBLEMS OF MICHIGAN. 



Hon. E. A. AVildey, Laud Commissioner, Lansing: 



I have been thoroughly convinced the past year of the advantages that 

 will come to us, and more especially to our successors, from the estab- 

 lishment of a forest reserve. Michigan has wonderful possibilities; it 

 seems to me greater than those of any other state. It has been said that 

 Michigan has made more millionaires by her natural resources than has 

 any other state. Yet we have in Michigan confronting us a condition 

 and not a theory. We still have the remarkable fact of an immense use 

 of forest products of the L'nited States, a use which in size constantly 

 astonishes me. I understand that the Michigan Central Railroad alone 

 uses annually one million ties, and strips yearly for this purpose 4,000 

 acres of land. Michigan sends telephone poles to Egypt, railroad ties 

 to Mexico. But here is the sad fact. No one is planting to replace all 

 this destruction. We sow our land to wheat every year ; but we are not 

 planting trees to take the place of the crop that has been harvested. 

 Grand Rapids manufacturers of furniture are reaching into other states 

 for their raw material. The Pere Marquette Railway goes south now 

 for her ties. We go to Canada for our lumber. In aii early day Michi- 

 gan had one-half the cork pine of the country within her borders. The 

 lumbermen took most of it, although forest fires have taken more than we 

 commonly su])pose. 



Now the question that everybody immediately asks when we talk about 

 forestry is, will it pay? I have become convinced that there is no other 

 product of the soil that will so well repay for the labor put upon it as the 

 forests. I know myself of large revenues coming from very small plant- 

 ings of trees. I know a case of 35 white pine trees on about one-third of 

 an acre, which in 35 years brought |50, or |1 .50 per acre. This is an indi- 

 cation that if a thorough forestry system had been established in Michigan 

 35 years ago in the white pine forests, we might today be cutting in 

 Michigan immense quantities of the best white pine lumber, and still have 

 with us the virgin forests with no prospect of their diminution. 



In 1899 the legislature of Michigan created a forestry commission of 

 three members, one of whom is Commissioner of the Land Office. I am 

 proud to say that the president of that commission is an expert in forestry. 

 Since 1885 he has given constant attention to this subject, and I consider 

 Hon. Chas. W. Garfield as the best equipped man in the State for this 

 important position. Last winter this commission set aside a reserve. 

 We went all over the State and selected a locality for this reserve which, 

 in our judgment, is the best fitted for this purpose. It lies in the counties 

 of Roscommon and Crawford. It contains within its borders two of the 

 largest inland lakes in Michigan. These lakes have an area of 108 square 

 miles. It is TOO to 800 feet above the great lakes, and 1,300 to 1,400 feet 

 above the sea. All the great rivers that drain the northern half of the 

 lower peninsula have their sources in this reserve, viz : Thunder Bay 

 river, the Au Sable, the Tittabawassee, the IVIuskegon and the Manistee. 

 It is a well known fact that such rivers as the Kalamazoo for instance 



