6 A NATURAL HISTORY SURVEY. 



Without attempting here and now to discuss these ques- 

 tions, it is enough to say that, however far from our ideal the 

 record of the past has been, present opportunities constitute 

 an imperative call to present duty. There are certain press- 

 ing problems of both economical and scientific interest to 

 which we should address ourselves. 



In Michigan two such problems are presented by our for- 

 ests and fisheries. It is to the former that I wish for a short 

 time to direct your attention. The facts are familiar, but I 

 am sure that those who have already done so much in this 

 direction are the very ones who will most gladly listen, if by 

 any means we may at length see more clearly and take some 

 actual forward steps toward the working out of the great prob- 

 lem involved in the future of our. Michigan forests. 



The pine belt of Michigan formed in its day part of one 

 of the finest natural forests on the face of the earth, with its 

 magnificent cork pines hundreds of years old, towering above 

 equally beautiful specimens of sugar maple, basswood, rock 

 elm and other deciduous trees, constituting the beautiful 

 growth of hard wood that still covers so many square miles of 

 northern Michigan. It was a forest that did not grow in a 

 day. It takes about two hundred years for a white pine tree 

 to come to maturity, and many of those cut by Michigan lum- 

 bermen were much older, so that when lumbering was com- 

 menced in the State one of its great natural resources that had 

 been hundreds of years in making changed rapidly into another 

 form of wealth and disappeared. The later history is familiar 

 to you. Year after year saw gigantic lumbering operations 

 farther and farther extended, and fearful fires sweeping 

 through the debris, carrying thousands of acres of virgin for- 

 est to its doom, with the homes and hopes of settlers, leaving 

 such a picture of desolation as haunts the memory of one who 

 has passed through it, all the more appalling because of the 

 tragic wreck of human interests, and the apparently hopeless 

 outlook for the future. 



It is well for us servants of the State, even if devotees of 



