34 MICHIGAN FORESTRY. 



year to correct the evils brought about by this error. The experience of all 

 our older states has proved the notion in error for those states, they have paid 

 a costly fine for their error and they are just beginning to correct its bad effects. 

 Nor is this all, the American farmer, the farmer of Michigan, who has known 

 these lands in our state for many years and whose judgement in this matter is 

 certainly worth all the expert testimony in the world has declared against 

 the lands. The fact that he preferred to wrestle with the heavy hardwood 

 forests of our and of other states and preferred to undertake the difficult prob- 

 lems of redeeming the arid regions of the west rather than settle these pinery 

 lands, should be conclusive evidence that they are not all farm lands. But 

 there is more to prove this fact. The vegetation of these lands is peculiar and is 

 the vegetation characteristic of pinery lands. Theelm,thebasswood,the maple, 

 the birch and ash refuse to make timber on these lands. The transition from 

 this land to the hardwoods on clay and loam is usually so sharp that it is strik- 

 ing. Even the unitiated, casual observer is astonished at the contrast. Here 

 on one side of the line, hardwoods eighty to 120 feet tall, mostly maple, ehn, 

 basswood, birch and beech, little or no oak and no jack pine, the ground dense- 

 ly covered with young trees and brush undergrowth, and a luxuriant growth 

 of grass fighting with young tree growth for possession of the ground in every 

 new opening. There on the other side of the line, scrub oak, five to ten shoots , 

 from an old burned stump, older trees gnarly, limby, few trees over 50 feet 

 high, few sprouts, or cripples of maple, cherry, poplar and white birch or else 

 a scattered growth of jack pine or a mixture of this with scrub oak, 

 everywhere pine stumps to idicate the former glory, but no elm, basswood, ash 

 nor beech, nor any tall hardwoods anywhere. The ground is not covered with 

 a dense growth of shrubs and young hardwood. The oak forms a thin stand 

 and niost of the ground is covered with sweet fern, huckleberry, with bush 

 honeysuckle, blackberry bramble and other persistent growth, among which a 

 sparse growth of grass and sedges is vainly trying to hold its own. In this way 

 nature has clearly indicated the difference between these lands and fully sub- 

 stantiates the correctness of opinion of the farmer. Nor has there been a lack 

 of actual trial and the hundreds of abandoned homes on the plains in every 

 countj'' containing such lands surely cannot all be accredited to shiftless- 

 ness. 



There is one fact in this connection which is often overlooked. It is the ex- 

 • perience of the pinery region of the Atlantic coast plain. Parts of New Jersey, 

 Delaware, and from there to Texas are a pinery in which settlement has con- 

 tinued ever since the landing and founding of Jamestown, and yet this region 

 is today wild woods. And in spite of a mild climate which extends the possi- 

 bilities and range of agriculture, these lands remain unimproved and await the 

 settler. Here is an area several times the size of Michigan still open to farm- 

 ing on sands. It must not be inferred from this, however, that none of this 

 land is fit for agriculture. To the contrary, the lands are extremely mixed and 

 one meets with surprises at every hand. It is for this reason that the law has 

 left the power with the commission to sell lands and there is no doubt but that 

 any real well intentioned farm settler can get lands within the forest reserves 

 provided the safety of the forest cover permits this exchange. Generally then, 

 while it must be considered as more than doubtful that all these lands or even 

 a large proportion are agricultural lands, the present state policy, the forest 

 reserve policy fully considers this claim and the state today, as ever before, 

 stands ready to promote settlement and agriculture inside as well as outside of 

 any forest reserve. 



"The land is good grazing land. " This claim is a dangerous one and it is 



