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brine is evaporated by means of the refuse from the great saw-mills in the vicinity of 

 Saginaw and other lumbering towns. Ours is the second State in the production of iron, 

 and the blast furnaces of Ironton, Elk Rapids, and a number of other places are drawing 

 their supply of charcoal for its reduction from the great hardwood forests in their vicinity. 

 The products of these forests are sent to the ends of the earth. Much of the first lumber 

 of the Atlantic cities and of the Old World comes from Michigan pineries. Threshing- 

 machines made in Battle Creek are sold in South America and Australia, and farming 

 implements, furniture, and a long list of articles requiring wood in their manufacture are 

 made in the State and exported from it, their manufacture being a source of support to 

 fifty thousand of our people and their sale a steady source of wealth to the State. 



Nor is it necessary to repeat the well-known fact that our forests are rapidly disap- 

 pearing. The bulletins of the last census, accessible to everyone, show that the estimated 

 amount of merchantable pine timber standing in Michigan May 31st, 1880, was thirty-five 

 billions of feet. At our present rate of consumption, five billions of feet annually, it will 

 take seven years to use up our pine forests. Suppose, however, that the estimates of the 

 amount remaining, although made with great care, are too low ; suppose for safety that 

 the pine will last twice as long as has been estimated, the fact still thrusts itself upon us 

 that in a few years this great source of our wealth will be gone. 



What are we doing in view of these facts 1 We are going on with astonishing 

 energy and improved machinery to hasten the end. Every man who can do so is trying 

 to get a piece of pine laud, or a quantity of logs before they are gone, and our own people, 

 in company with eastern capitalists, are planning the speedy destruction of the hardwood 

 forests as soon as the pine lands have been stripped. The newspaper articles that charge 

 these things upon us are not sensational. They do not tell all the truth. We have 

 squandered with reckless haste the abundant forest wealth with which the State was 

 endowed, and, besides all this, time and again, forest tires, that might have been prevented, 

 have swept over fair portions of the commonwealth, carrying swift destruction with them 

 and completing the work that the axe had begun. 



In the study of this subject then we may as well turn our attention at once to the 

 forests of the future, for it is evident that those of the present will be gone in a few years. 

 Our own legitimate wants and the great profits of the lumber trade have already settled 

 the question for Michigan. If we want forests we must make them. 



Without repeating the arguments that have been given so fully by others, I shall 

 assume, what is admitted by everyone who has ever bestowed serious thought upon the 

 subject, that the highest welfare of the State requires the establishment and continued 

 maintenance of a suitable proportion of wood-land. It may be assumed, too, that, in due 

 time, both Government and people, moved by necessity, if by no higher influence, will 

 unite in a settled purpose to secui'e this. As soon as this attitude is taken by the people 

 of the State, and we are ready to enter upon the work of reforesting, we shall find our- 

 selves face to face with various difficult practical problems. Some of us, perhaps, may 

 render a service by studying these problems now, viz.: — 



(1) What parts of the State and what proportion of its area should be covered with 

 forests ? 



Economists estimate about twenty-five per cent, as a suitable proportion ; but this 

 varies with the position, physical character, and commercial interests of the State or 

 country under consideration. The State of Michigan contains large areas that ai'e worth- 

 less for any other purpose than raising timber, and still more extended regions that, if 

 not absolutely valueless for agricultural purposes, can be used to far better advantage in 

 growing trees than in raising any other crop whatever. Undoubtedly, the great question 

 with us is. How, in the most direct practical way, can we rehabitate the extensive 

 regions in the central and northern parts of the lower peninsula that have been stripped 

 of their pine forests, and the remaining portions of this region that will so soon be bare 1 

 Anyone that has been through this part of the State will remember its desolate and ruined 

 aspect. " The valuable trees were all felled years ago, and the lumberman moved on to 

 fresh spoils, leaving behind an inextricably confused mass of tree tops, broken logs, and 

 uprooted trunks. Blackberry canes spring up everywhere, forming a tangled thicket, and 

 a few scattering poplar, birch, and cherry trees serve for arboreal life, above which tower the 



