PHYSICAL A\D CLIMATIC SETTING 9 



air layers. The relation of all this to agriculture 

 is manifest. There are places remote from the in- 

 fluence of the lakes where peaches do well. Such a 

 point is the high morainic ridge near Eureka in 

 Clinton County and, well to the north, a similar 

 ridge near Higgins Lake in Crawford County; while 

 even close to Lake Michigan, bad freezes, such as 

 that which occurred along the southwest shore on 

 October 11, 1906, have done much less damage on 

 the elevated table-land some miles back from the 

 Lake. The first snows of winter appear at Ishpemiiig 

 sooner than at Marquette eight hundred feet lower 

 down, if also a dozen miles nearer the Lake. Some 

 low areas, such as that in southern Gratiot and 

 Saginaw counties, have suffered much from unseason- 

 able frosts, creating for the pioneers real famine con- 

 ditions, until the phrase, "starving Gratiot," in the 

 decade before the Civil War, acquired sinister signifi- 

 cance. Undoubtedly the encompassing forest com- 

 plicates the situation, particularly as affecting air 

 drainage. J. M. Longyear of Marquette has observed 

 that Finnish farmers, in clearing their farms, have 

 frequently established their clearings at adjacent 

 corners in order to increase the free space for the 

 movement of the atmosphere and thus reduce the 

 liability to frosts. It appears that the removal of 

 the forest cover in the flat country in the region 

 of the old "Grand ]?iver Outlet" (Saginaw and 

 Gratiot counties) has similarly reduced the liability 

 to unseasonable freezings. It is plain, however, that 

 farms located on hills and ridges, in periods of fall- 



