1883.] “ The Plains” of Michigan. 255 
farming purposes are constantly made. The sales at the State 
Land Office alone, according to information given at the office at 
Lansing, have averaged about twenty thousand to twenty-five 
thousand acres per month during the summer of 1882. 
But whatever present advantages may be gained by this rapid 
transfer from the possession of the State and the railroad com- 
panies to that of individuals,a careful study of the facts of the case 
inevitably leads to the conclusion that undue inducements for the 
purchase and settlement of lands that cannot sustain a permanent 
population are greatly to be regretted. It may yet be found, it is 
true, that the plains are capable of sustaining such a population 
by the products of the soil. Some crop, yet untried, may flourish 
there, orsome method of fertilization may transform them into 
fruitful fields, but, from all that is known of the conditions of 
successful agriculture, there is no reason to expect such a future 
for them 
There is one way, however, and at present there seems to be but 
one way, in which these and other waste lands in the same part of 
the State may be made permanently remunerative. They may be 
made to produce forests of valuable timber and a product of this 
sort, judging from the present demand, is likely to be worth many 
times as much as thin crops of grain that might be gathered from 
the soil during the entire period of its growth. From what has 
been stated already it is evident that, however unpromising the 
outlook may be for the growth of other vegetation, the plains are 
capable of producing several valuable kinds of timber trees, while 
the better lands around them have produced one of the finest 
_ hatural forests that ever clothed the earth. 
Over a large portion of this extensive region there is every 
reason to believe that the policy now pursued in the State of 
Maine, according to the forestry bulletins of the last census, of 
cutting only the large trees and carefully protecting the re- 
_ Mander,” would give at jntervals a very profitable growth of 
: S pine and other timber, and it is to be earnestly hoped that before 
many years such a system may be inaugurated in Michigan. It 
ie Will require a radical change from the present wasteful method of 
F — everything that can profitably be turned into lumber and 
oe then leaving the ground to the destructive action cf fire, but it is 
2 ird practicable when once both State and people have come 
to realize its necessity and the profits to be derived from such a 
