TAX LANDS AND FORESTRY. 89 



be worth cutting, four-fifths of them at least. This method does not 

 build up the country. 



I am a fisherman and a farmer and own 280 acres of land in Ford 

 Eiver township in Delta county. 



George Jensen. 



FROM A LECTURE GIVEN BY THOS. B. WYMAN, OF THE CLEVELAND CLIFFS IRON 



COMPANY BEFORE THE MICHIGAN AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE ON APRIL 



7, 1908, ON REFORESTATION IN THE UPPER PENINSULA. 



We are prone to believe that nothing has been done by nature toward 

 reforestating the many thousands of acres which have been deforested 

 either by the innumerable forest fires of unknown origin or by the 

 woodsman's axe. But here we err, for there are very few acres which 

 have not already restocked themselves or are now in the process of re- 

 stocking. There are thousands of these acres, to be sure, which show 

 only an occasional seedling, but that seedling will be followed by 

 others from the same source or by others of its own production and 

 eventually the entire area will furnish forest cover — provided fires do 

 not continually prevent the efforts of nature. In other words, if pro- 

 tection were furnished every acre would, in time, reproduce itself. 



Not always, hoAvever, is this restocking of the species desired, but it 

 is a means to the desired end and acts as an usher growth for the more 

 valuable and hence more to be desired species. The best example of this 

 is our native pine or fire-cherry. It occupies the ground within a year 

 after the removal of the hardwoods and the consequent exposure of 

 the soil to the light and air. The cherry, acting as a nurse, keeps the 

 light soil from blowing and erosion, maintains its moisture aind fur- 

 nished a quick leaf mould. After four or five years the hardwoods are 

 noticeable under the cherry which is then from eight to twelve feet high. 

 When the cherry is about twenty feet high it has reached the point of 

 most rapid growth and begins to feel the effects of the black knot, which 

 attacks it at all ages in this upper country. It then begins to shorten 

 its annual height growth, puts on more body and, if severely crowded 

 by the oncoming maple and birch or overtopped by the wolfish balsam, 

 it may break at about half its height and so add its decaying top to the 

 soil cover. By the thirty-fifth year the cherry has been practically 

 superseded by the clean boiled hardwoods, which have since their birth 

 been kept in the straight and narrow upward path leading to light. 



On typical hardwood soil — sandy loam with us — the natural repro- 

 duction comes in more slowly because it produces directly the maple, 

 beech and birch with no usher growth of cherry. 



Of the coniferous timbers there are large acreages reproduced in 

 white, Norway, and Jack pine and mixtures of the same on soil graded 

 according to the needs of the species. This regeneration is of all ages 

 from one to fifty years and in stands of all degrees of density. I know 

 of tracts of Jack pine regeneration which are simply impassable and 

 others which to duplicate and raise would cost from $15,000 to $20,000 

 to the acre. 

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