2 RURAL MICHIGAN 



seconds, while the most northerly of the Gull Islands 

 is nearly a degree still farther to the north. The east 

 and west dimension of the State runs through ap- 

 proximately eight degrees of longitude, Port Huron 

 standing in longitude 82 degrees, 25 minutes, 30 

 seconds, while the far-away mouth of the Montreal 

 River at the most northwesterly extremity of the 

 Upper Peninsula is in longitude 90 degrees, 25 min- 

 utes, 25 seconds. 



For a state whose area is only 57,980 square miles 

 (about that of Illinois), IMichigan is evidently 

 sprawled over much space on the map, — a fact deeply 

 impressed on the traveler from Ironwood to Lansing, 

 or Houghton to Detroit. This alone helps to keep 

 the State disorganized and separatist in tendency, 

 all the more that a waterway broad and deep divides 

 northwestern from southeastern Michigan. It in- 

 volves, too, variations in temperature, rainfall and 

 duration of sunshine and twiliglit of the utmost im- 

 portance to natural vegetation and animal life and 

 to agriculture. Most persons do not appreciate that 

 it is as far from IMichigan's copper country to the 

 metropolitan city of Detroit as from Detroit to the 

 national capital in terms of miles in a direct line be- 

 tween the points; and, although traveling facilities 

 are reasonably excellent, the time and distance for the 

 intra-state journey is even less favorable. It is hardly 

 to be wondered at that one sometimes hears talk of 

 Michigan's dissolving itself into two commonwealths, 

 when nature has omitted nothing that works for 

 mutual incompatibility and man has done little to 



