Apeil 'J9, 1898.] 



SCIENCE. 



579.' 



others that started later ; and the fact that 

 a special committee appointed for the pur- 

 pose of securing appropriations from the 

 Legislature for printing the publications of 

 the Michigan Academy of Science has thus 

 far met with no success may well lead to 

 careful seeking after the cause of this ap- 

 parent indifference. Are we producing noth- 

 ing worthy of the attention of the State? 

 Or is our work good enough in its way, but 

 of no money value, and consequently some- 

 thing that the public money ought not to 

 be spent for ? Or is there some occult rea- 

 son, not yet suggested, for a condition of 

 affairs that, to say the least, is not credit- 

 able to the State of Michigan or to the 

 scientific workers within its borders? 



I am frank to say that, in my own judg- 

 ment, we have not alwaj's in the past acted 

 with consummate wisdom when we have 

 sought to secure the cooperation of the 

 State in enlarging the scope of the public 

 surveys ; but, without attempting to review 

 here a history more instructive than flatter- 

 ing, I may be permitted to express the con- 

 viction that in the immediate future, by 

 unitedly and at once taking up certain spe- 

 cific problems that are recognized by every 

 one as being of paramount importance from 

 an economical point of view, the study of 

 which, at the same time, affords full scope 

 for scientific investigation, we shall be tak- 

 ing the surest way to the end in view. 



"We have in Michigan to-day two such 

 problems presented by our forests and fish- 

 eries. 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 di- 

 rection 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 problem 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, tower- 

 ing 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 lumbermen 

 were much older, so that when lumbering 

 was commenced in the State one of its 

 great natural resources that had been hun- 

 dreds of years in making changed rapidly 

 into another form of wealth and disap- 

 peared. The later history is familiar to 

 you. Year after year saw gigantic lumber- 

 ing operations farther and farther extended, 

 and fearful fires sweeping through the 

 debris, carrying thousands of acres of virgin \ 

 forest to its doom, and with it 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 ap- 

 palling because of the tragic wreck of 

 human interests, and the apparently hope- 

 less outlook for the future. 



It is well for us servants of the State, 

 even if devotees of pure science, to try and 

 form some conception of the magnitude of 

 an interest that has been so conspicuous an 

 element in the material development of the 

 Commonwealth. Briefly, then, as early as 

 1881 the aggregate value of the forest prod- 

 ucts of the State was estimated to have 

 reached more than a billion dollars, and, 

 now after half a century of lumbering, and 

 after the closing of one great mill after 

 another and removal of the operators to 

 other fields, the State of ' Michigan alone 

 produced in 1897 2,335,000,000 feet of 

 lumber and 1,284,000,000 shingles. These 

 figures may produce no real conception of 

 what they stand for, but they may help us 



