84 RURAL MICHIGAN 



areas. These "brush fires'' killed the yoimg growth 

 that eventually would have reconstituted the forest 

 of merchantable timber of cut-over lands; they de- 

 stroyed the humus of the soil, the decomposed forest 

 litter containing much nitrogen which could only 

 bo restored by the painful and costly process of re- 

 fertilization, which conserved soil-moisture, and 

 maintained those animal orsranisms that convert raw 

 soil to forms suital)le for plant-food. On the lighter 

 sandy soils of the State, which prevail in many coun- 

 ties on both sides of the Straits of Mackinac, these 

 periodic burnings and re-burnings were definitely 

 calamitous, producing veritable sterility in some quar- 

 ters, so that a blasted heath is found where vegetation 

 useful to man should be. Such lands as these, when 

 settled on by the poor, the misdirected and deceived 

 persons, yield nothing but hardships, penury, dis- 

 aster, a delinquent tax sale and a damaged reputa- 

 tion for Michigan farm lands. 



The removal of the covering forest from the hill- 

 tops so characteristic of the State's topography, pro- 

 moted denudation and erosion — the creation of worth- 

 less land where the forest once stood, perhaps, too, 

 destroying the fertility of the surrounding arable 

 fields which have received the sandy outwash of the 

 scoured and denuded uplands. Where this outwash 

 reached the water-courses, they were choked with 

 sand-bars; and they became torrential in brief sea- 

 sons when the run-olf was excessive, and scant of 

 water at other times. Some welcomed wild fire as a 

 land-clearing agency, without perceiving that such 



