obliged to use tamarack for car floors. The destruc- 

 tion of the cedar is so nearly completed that a very few 

 years more will exhaust the supply of ties, fence posts 

 and telegraph poles. It is a grave question as to what 

 the railroads are to do for track and car material to 

 say nothing of the effect on the revenue of fhe railroad 

 companies by the stopping of freight revenue from logs 

 and lumber which they have depended 011 for so many 

 years. So far as I know not one single thing has been 

 done to provide for the maintenance of the forest on 

 any of the land in lower Michigan. The State seems 

 to have been content to allow the forest to be stripped 

 from the land and the fires to follow up the destruc- 

 tion, so that thousands of acres which should have been 

 growing timber for the last forty years are now grow- 

 ing nothing but sweet fern and weeds of various kinds. 

 It seems to me the State has a duty to perform in this 

 connection, and that no time should be lost in per- 

 forming it. Our company had a forestry man from 

 Washington, who looked over some tracts of country 

 with a view of giving us advice as to what should be 

 done in the way of planting trees, etc., so as to get tim- 

 ber started, both as a commercial proposition and as 

 an object lesson in getting others interested in timber 

 culture. After this gentleman looked over lower 

 Michigan, he advised us that it was the height of folly 

 for anybody to spend any money in reforestation, as 

 the danger from loss by reason of fires started on State 

 land was so great that it would be foolish for private 

 individuals or for corporations to spend a dollar in 

 putting out trees. The State should stop fires and 

 pass a tax law that would not over-tax timber land 

 and should put a good share of the cut over lands into 

 forest reserves. It is as easy to raise pine trees from 

 seed in a nursery as it is to raise carrots in a garden, 

 and they are cheaply planted and after say ten or 

 twelve years will grow in height from two to three feet 

 a year. With the fires stopped ten to fifteen years 

 would give us a forest cover for our waste land that 

 would help our climate and our streams. In twenty to 

 twenty-five years we could begin to get a revenue that 

 would increase yearly from that time on, and all this 

 without a cent of expense to the State except for 

 stopping fires." 



Wm. H. White, of Boyne City, writes 

 Fire and the president of the Forestry Corn- 



Stream mission : 



Protection "This is a grand and good work 



which the Michigan Forestry Asso- 

 ciation is organized to accomplish, and should have 

 the co-operation of the lumberman and timber land 

 holders of the State. There is no individual who can 

 do anything. It must be done by the State and na- 

 tion. Our cut-over lands that are not suitable for 

 agriculture should be cared for. That is, the small 

 trees that are left after the lumberman's axe has gone 

 through, should be protected from fire and allowed to 

 grow. As it is now/ after the land has been logged and 

 the dry spell comes on, the fire goes through and most 

 of the small timber is killed before any undergrowth 

 comes up to check the flames. If the land can only 

 be cared for a few years after it is logged, it would 

 then be protected from fire by the undergrowth, and 

 then the dead brush would rot down. It is the first 

 year after logging that the great risk comes. I would 

 also advocate protecting the forests at the heads of 

 streams so as to protect our water-supply. Anything 

 affecting our water supply affects everything else, 

 namely, fish, stock raising, irrigation, etc. We have 

 a few thousand acres at the head waters of the Boyne 

 river, and this land should be protected after the saw 

 timber has been taken off. It would be very necessary 

 to have this protected on account of the water supply 

 as there are so many small streams coming out of the 



