[902. 



FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION. 



41, 



THE JACK PINE PLAINS OF MICHIGAN/== 



By Filibert Roth, 



Chief of Division R, General Land Office. 



^^ TT is a pity your people failed in 

 X their attempt to introduce some 

 kind of a state forest system, ' ' was sug- 

 gested to a wide-awake ex-governor of 

 one of the Lake States. 



" Yes," he answered, " but our land 

 is all agricultural land, it is needed for 

 farms, and therefore there is no room 

 for any forest experiments." 



This is a representative view. At the 

 same time, there is in this gentleman's 

 state an entire county, and one of the 

 older and larger ones at that, which has 

 not enough of business to induce a rail- 

 way company to extend its lines into 

 any part of it. Nor is this sand-plain 

 country an exception ; it is only a part 

 of a very considerable portion of that 

 state, and, for that matter, of the entire 

 area of the Lake States. 



If we look a little closer into the 

 farming, we find that in spite of the 

 glowing descriptions of real-estate men 

 and of the excellent efforts of the agri- 

 cultural colleges and experiment sta- 

 tions, the sand is sand, and sand only. 

 The j'ield is largely of one, or very 

 few, kinds ; this yield is uncertain ; 

 the clover may or may not catch for 

 one, even for several seasons. The 

 very soil itself is uncertain, and on 

 every large clearing we see sand piled 

 up by the winds along the fences, until 

 many of these are buried in mobile sand 

 dunes. During the spring and fall 

 storms one may see the sands travel and 

 drift like the snows of winter. A 

 farmer who had cultivated this kind of 

 land in Wisconsin and who had been 

 successful enough to earn a better farm 

 on the heavy clays of Marathon county, 

 said, in explaining the sale of a forty- 

 acre tract of this sand , " I had to sell it 

 cheap ; the sand had drifted in for sev- 

 eral rods on all four sides, until a large 

 part of the land was ruined." 



The frugal Polack has succeeded here 



and there. To him a home, a tract of 

 land on which he could breathe freely 

 and be, for a time at least, without a 

 master to him any kind of land ap- 

 peals. But this success is only tempo- 

 rary, and only partial; many families 

 are ruined on these sand lands; there is 

 unrest ; men move away ; new ones 

 come, frequently falling prey to un- 

 scrupulous real-estate brokers. In time 

 these conditions become more stable, 

 abandoned farms remain abandoned, 

 and just as in the case of many tracts in 

 the older states, particularly New Eng- 

 land, man "lets in the jungle" he 

 waits for the forest to heal up the many 

 scars he has inflicted on the land. For- 

 tunately for the Lake States, there is a 

 climate and a tree which make this pos- 

 sible, and which in time will heal and 

 cover up the dreariest sands. 



This tree is the Jack Pine that frugal 

 scrub among the stately race of northern 

 ever-greens. A prolific seed tree, with 

 closed, resistant cones, a rapid grower, 

 with an abundance of crown and foliage, 

 this tree spreads over these barren 

 lands, whether abandoned by other for- 

 est trees, ruined by fire, or left to waste 

 by the farmer. 



The northern Jack Pine does not 

 stand alone; it is the representative of 

 a much underrated group of pines occu- 

 pying portions of nearly all parts of 

 timbered North America. With its rela- 

 tives, it shows frugality, tenacity, fer- 

 tility-, and no small degree of usefulness. 

 Our northern Jack Pine fairly loves the 

 sand, and to see it in its natural state, 

 it gives the impression that sand alone 

 is its proper home. A small scrub tree 

 on the dry stretches along the prairies, 

 it grows larger as the general conditions 

 become more favorable, until it reaches 

 a height of fully 100 feet in the regular 

 pineries, with a diameter of 15 inches 

 and over. But it is the small-sized tree. 



* Read at the summer meeting of the American Forestry Association. 



