PREFACE. 



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 mills at 

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

 were kept running, but they made only a slight impression 

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

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



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