THE INFLUENCE OF SOILS 47 



an area of some 600 square miles in Eoscommon 

 and Crawford counties, now comprised largely in 

 the State's forests adjacent to Houghton Lake and 

 Higgins Lake.^ Moraines and outwash plains, sandy 

 in composition, mainly characterize the district. 

 There are small areas of swamp in the depressions 

 and of clay soil. At some other points the clay 

 underlies the sandy outwash of the surface, in some 

 places at considerable depth. On the uplands were 

 found the hardwood type; the white pine; the iSTor- 

 way pine; the jack pine; and on the lowlands ap- 

 peared the open meadow type; the tamarack-arbor- 

 vitae and the mixed type. This region had been 

 deforested and suffered much from fire, but where 

 the soil and moisture conditions were favorable, Liv- 

 ingston found evidence that the white and Norway 

 pines were reproducing themselves, and orchards 

 promised well on the ridges and sandy loams. He 

 observed, as others have done, that the frequent burn- 

 ing of the humus had impoverished the soil and by 

 so much retarded its development for agricultural 

 and sylvicultural purposes. His opinion regarding 

 the future of the region was that, "on the uplands 

 most of the rlifferent kinds of soil have been tested 

 for agriculture, the clay hills and the clay plains, 

 both of comparatively small extent, make excellent 

 farming lands. The gravelly and loamy sand of most 

 of the ridges is easily tilled, and, with enough care, 



^ Rept. of State Bd. Geol. Survey of Mich., for the year 

 190.3: Lansing. l^Oo: Off. Cf. Leverett and Taylor: "The 

 Pleistocene of Indiana and Michigan." 



