PEEFACE. 



The preface of a book is usually considered the proper place 

 for an author to give his reasons for writing it. Following the 

 usual custom in this matter, I may say that I am a son of a 

 carpenter, who followed the business of building bridges, barns, 

 houses, and similar structures, and my earliest recollections 

 take me back to the time when I spent many an hour in the 

 shop, twirling and unrolling the long, silky pine and white- 

 wood shavings, and at these times I heard discussions almost 

 daily in regard to wood, timber, trees, their quality, value, and 

 variety. My father also owned a farm in the heavily wooded 

 regions of Western New York, and he highly appreciated the • 

 value of certain kinds of trees growing thereon, for his practiced 

 eye would measure the size of a hewn stick of timber that 

 could be made from a giant oak, beech, or ether kind of tree as 

 it stood in the forest, as well as make a very close guess as to 

 the number of feet of boards or plank that could be produced 

 from the great white-woods, hemlocks, or pines, of those 

 regions. Brought up amid such surroundings, and early taught 

 to use tools and work in wood myself, it was but natural that I 

 should take an interest in Forestry, and endeavor to learn 

 something of the value of trees and forests. 



A few years later, or in the summer of 1846, I spent several 

 weeks in the great pine forests of Eastern Michigan, commenc- 

 ing at Port Huron, at the foot of Lake Huron, thence travel- 

 ling northward to the Straits of Mackinaw. This extensive 

 region was at that time an almost unbroken wilderness, although 

 there were a few saw-mills scattered here and there along the 

 lake shore, or in the bays, that afforded a good harbor for the 

 small vessels engaged in transporting lumber. The miUs at 

 Port Huron, Saginaw, Thunder Bay, and a few other places 

 were kept running, but they made only a sUght impression 

 upon the surrounding forests, and it was often asserted at that 

 dav, that the pine forests of Michigan were simply inexhausti- 



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