MICHIGAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 
197 
Evergreen trees, whether coniferous or broad-leaved (they happen to 
be all conifers in Michigan) seem to be just as characteristic of poor 
soil* as of any particular kind of climate. Certainly the parts of the 
eastern United States where agriculture had its greatest development 
before the days of commercial fertilizers had far fewer evergreens in 
their original forests than have those parts which are still thinly 
settled. In traveling across such predominantly agricultural states as 
Ohio or Illinois one sees almost no evergreens at all. 
The relation of evergreens to soils is illustrated pretty well by some 
statistics obtained from my notes of this very trip. By dividing ihe 
itinerary into three nearly equal parts and calculating the percentage of 
evergreen trees for each I find that between St. Ignace and Soo Junction, 
where there are many limestone outcrops and a few farms, the percentage 
is 14. Between Soo Junction and Sault Ste. Marie, where the country 
is almost uninhabited, it rises to 5G, while between Sault Ste. Marie 
and Trout Lake, where farms are most numerous, the evergreens con- 
stitute only 38%. As these statistics were all obtained in the same man- 
ner, and within a few days of each other, we are apparently justified 
in concluding that in this region, as farther south, the desirability of 
land for agricultural purposes is roughly inversely proportional to the 
percentage of evergreens in the forests. 
Of course the objection might be raised that all that these figures 
indicate is that in the more populous areas more of the white pine has 
been cut out, leaving a larger proportion of the relatively worthless 
birch and aspen. But lumbering can be carried on just as well in a 
wilderness as in a populous region, topographic conditions being equal; 
and furthermore, Finns Strobus was actually seen oftener in the third 
stage of the journey than in the second. The farmers have doubtless 
cleared the hardwood forests first, here as elsewhere, and yet the forests 
still standing in the more clayey soils contain proportionately more hard- 
wood than do those a few miles farther north, where most of the pine 
has been removed by lumbermen. 
The following trees and shrubs which are more or less common in 
the Lower Peninsula were conspicuous by their absence between St. 
Ignace and Sault Ste. Marie. (Where no specific name is mentioned it 
means that no species of that genus was seen.) 
J un ip eru s V i rgi n i an a 
Smilax 
Juglans 
Hicoria 
Populus deltoides 
Salix nigra 
Carpinus 
Castanea 
Quercus alba 
Q u ercu s i n aero carpa 
Quercus coccinea 
Quercus velutina 
*By a poor soil is meant one which is deficient in one or more of the elements needed by 
growing crops, or in which some physical or toxic condition makes some of the essential 
elements relatively unavailable. Just what the soil constituent is that favors the growth of 
deciduous trees is not yet obvious, but it is probably either phosphorus or potassium. 
