FORESTRY COMMISSION. 113 



plicable to Michigan, ilr. Rothe observes: "Let the hills be deprived 

 of the rest of the protection which the forest affords and half the area of 

 the state will be sterile in less than fifty years. The rain will wash the 

 soil from the hilltops first, then from the slopes; the limestone, which 

 is now covered with productive humus, loam and clay, will be laid bare. 

 * * * The rainfall will be diminished and become irregular. Snow 

 and rainwater will at once run down in the valleys and cause periodical 

 freshets." 



Already in Michigan we have our bald and barren hills, our rivers 

 flooded in spring and shallow or dry in the ordinary midsummer. Wet 

 seasons are rare. Crops will be more certain with a larger timber 

 area. Is it not time to call a halt in forest destruction and to com- 

 mence reforestation on a systematic scale? Are not the necessities of 

 the case sufficiently apparent? Can we not read history and learn the 

 lessons of experience? Must destruction proceed until our prosperity 

 is more seriously endangered and our rural population is further dimin- 

 ished? 



In many European countries, where forest culture is taught as an 

 exact science, the people have learned its importance in the dearest and 

 most valuable of all schools — the school of experience. With them it 

 is not a question of what will pay from the lumberman's viewpoint, but 

 what will save and conserve the best arable land from the evils that are 

 sure to follow the destruction of their forests. The necessity already 

 exists, not only for preserving the forests we now have, but also for 

 planting new trees and adding to them. Whenever the beginning is 

 made to repair as far as possible the damage that has been done, it must 

 be undertaken with the knowledge that the generation making it can- 

 not profit mach by it. To a large degree, the work will be unselfish. 

 The great benefit will be for those who come after. Perhaps it may be 

 too much to hope that a beginning will be made before imperious ne- 

 cessity compels it, in order to save our fair peninsula from becoming 

 less populous and prosperous as an agricultural State. The census 

 tables show that its decline in this respect has commenced. Every foot 

 of its best arable soil can be made more productive by the reforestation 

 of lands it does not pay to cultivate. Unless steps are taken to do this, 

 nothing under the sun seems to be more certain than that our rural pop- 

 ulation will continue to decline from year to .year, and from decade to 

 decade, until a wiser generation than the present shall encourage some 

 systematic and effective plan of tree planting and growing. No worthier 

 work can be done by our own people. 



What has been will be. Speaking of the devastation following the 

 removal of forests the world over, George P. Marsh says: "When the 

 forest is gone the great reservoirs of moisture stored up in its vegetable 

 mould is evaporated, and returns only in deluges of rain to wash away 

 the parched dust into which that mould has been converted. The well- 

 wooded and humid hills are turned to ridges of dry rock, which en- 

 cumber the low grounds and check the water courses with its debris, 

 and — except in countries favored with an equable distribution of rain 

 through the seasons, and a moderate and regular inclination of surface — 

 the whole earth, unless rescued by human art from the physical degra- 

 dation to which it tends, becomes an assemblage of bald mountains, of 

 barren, turfless hills, and of swampy and malarious plains." 



