49 
of the residents, wnich have fairly forced themselves on the attention 
of all experienced and observing people, are all too intimately connected 
with the changes in the surface cover to leave in doubt the influence of 
this latter on the former. 
The flow of all the larger rivers has changed during the last forty 
years; navigation has been abandoned on the Wisconsin, logging and 
rafting has become more difficult on all rivers, and, what is even a far 
better measure of these important changes, the ox River is failing to 
furnish the power which it formerly supplied in abundance. Similar 
observations have been made on all smaller streams. The “June 
freshet,” which in former years could be relied upon in driving opera- 
tions, has ceased on most streams and is uncertain on the rest of them. 
Of the hundreds of miles of corduroy road a goodly per cent has fallen 
into disuse, the ground on the sides has become dry enough for teams, 
many Swamps of former years are dry, and hundreds of others have 
been converted into hay meadows and fields without a foot of ditching, 
Tamarack stood on parts of the present site of Superior, and both 
Cedar and Tamarack were mixed through the forests in many places 
where the mere clearing has sufficed to dry the land for the plow. 
Many of the smaller swamps are changed before actual clearing takes 
place. Where the tires, following the logging operations, have cleaned 
out the swamp thicket, Aspen has followed the fire exactly as in the 
upland, and although in some cases many years have elapsed, the places 
have not reverted to swamp timber—the ground is too dry; the hard- 
wood thickets have come to stay. These things are well known, espe- 
cially to the woodsmen of the region; they are in all cases ascribed to 
the removal of timber, and there is probably no locality in the world 
where this subject could better be studied than in north Wisconsin, A 
drive with some old resident through the settled parts of Shawano, 
Marathon, Taylor, and other counties, and the rehearsal of his memo- 
ries, present matters of the utmost interest in this connection, which 
will hardly fail to convince even the most skeptical of the decided 
changes in drainage and soil moisture which have occurred here and 
are still in progress. 
THE OUTLOOK FOR THE FUTURE. 
It is impossible to foretell how long the Pine is likely to last. As 
stumpage increases in price and the opportunity to buy it decreases, 
one mill after another drops out. Half the mills of twenty years ago 
are no longer in existence, not because they failed to pay, but because 
their Pine supplies gave out, and this same condition will continue. 
The output, already on the decline, will grow smaller, and the exploita- 
tion of the 17,000,000,000 feet of standing timber is likely to be drawn 
_ out over a period far greater than would seem possible with the present 
rate of cutting. Nevertheless, the experience in parts of Michigan, and 
also of Wood, Portage, and other counties in Wisconsin, indicates that 
16479—No, 16 4 
