JULY, 1900. BRUNCKEN— ON THE FOREST CONDITIONS, ETC. 
179 
On the Forest Conditions in the Vicinity of Milwaukee* 
By ERNEST BRUNCKEN. 
The territory to which these notes refer comprises the town- 
ships Milwaukee and Wauwatosa, and the northern halves of 
the townships Lake and Greenfield. It is essentially a rolling 
plateau of glacial and postglacial clays, with occasional gravelly 
areas. Boulders of crystalline rocks are common in the glacial, 
and rare in the post-glacial deposits. The bed rock, formed of 
Niagara limestone, except in the northwestern portion, where it 
is Hamilton cement rock, shows very few outcrops, and those 
of very limited extent. Towards Lake Michigan, this plateau 
falls off very abruptly, forming almost vertical banks of an aver- 
age height of fifty feet. In the town of Milwaukee there is a 
series of terraces of an average width of about i,ooo feet. The 
banks are in many places deeply dissected by ravines. The en- 
tire plateau is deeply eroded by the Milwaukee, Menomonee and 
Kinnickinnic rivers and numerous smaller water courses. 
Springs are common at the base of hills and bluffs. There are 
a number of small ponds, and in the depressions there are man}' 
marshy places, in some of which, during wet seasons, open water 
remains at the surface all summer. 
This territory was originally covered with a heavy hardwood 
forest, with the exception of a marshy area, covered with sedges, 
at the mouth of the rivers. There was a large tamarack swamp 
in the southwest portion, and smaller ones in many other places. 
Settlement and the consequent clearing away of most of the for- 
est took place between 50 and 60 years ago. Since then the for- 
ests of this neighborhood have consisted of isolated patches, the 
largest ones about 100 acres in extent, and ranging down to lit- 
tle groves of two and three acres. In the aggregate, there is a 
very respectable amount of wood land to be found in this region, 
but reliable statistics as to its acreage are not in existence. In 
this regard, as well as in regard to the condition in which these 
small forest tracts are found, the neighborhood of Alilwaukee is 
typical of much of the settled and agricultural part of the state, 
and for this reason these notes may be of more than local interest. 
The economic importance of these timber lots at the present 
moment is not very great. They are mostly parts of farms, and 
nearly all of them serve as pastures for farm cattle. They pro- 
