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served not only the valuable lumbering industry, but also cli- 
matic conditions of the greatest importance. As it is, we have 
left only vast sandy wastes covered with jack-pines, and these of 
the smallest and meanest description. There is no shade, and 
the plains are arid and desolate, affording apparently no oppor- 
tunities for even ordinary agricultural operations. In Oscoda 
and Au Sable, contiguous towns except for the intervening Au 
Sable River, the twenty-odd saw-mills are now reduced to four, 
and these are fed principally upon “‘ dead-heads,””— snags dragged 
out from the bed of the river. A population of ten or twelve 
thousand has become reduced to two or three thousand, with a 
corresponding decline in general business. 
This depressing picture is repeated a thousand times through- 
out the once rich lumbering regions of the United States, and 
marks one of the most brutal cases of looting of the prop- 
erty of a future generation that the world has ever witnessed. 
It is probably not too much to say that the reforestration that is 
now recognized as a necessity will cost a hundred fold what it 
would have done to preserve the existing forests, and many times 
the price that has been obtained for the lumber cut. A still 
worse feature is that this cannot be done at all until special 
methods are devised. Experimental work in this direction is now 
proceeding, especially under the direction of Mr. Carl Schmidt, 
of Detroit, who has bought Cedar Lake and a large area in its 
vicinity. 
Other industries, except beyond the limits of the sand bar- 
rens, are unimportant. Great quantities of blueberries, chiefly 
the low sweet blueberry (Vaccinium pennsylvanicum) are exported, 
the picking being done chiefly by Chippewa Indians, who have a 
settlement near by and establish temporary camps from place to 
place, as the harvest proceeds. Both the large and small cran- 
berry are found in the bogs, the latter being more common, but 
less esteemed. Some use is made of the high bush cranberry 
(Viburnum Opulus), which grows in the edges of the swamps. 
Checkerberries, bearberries and bunchberries abound, but are 
not commercial elements, the same being true of the choke-berry. 
The wild red cherry (Prunus pennsylvanica) is not uncommon. 
