Most of Michigan's lake - strewn terrain is gently rolling. Virtually all of it used to be covered with dense forests that long ago attracted the attention of loggers, who began arriving in Michigan in the mid - 19th century.

Especially prized were the stands of towering white pines, which could easily be milled into building material. Huge amounts of pine were harvested to build houses, first for French settlers in Detroit (later to become one of the most industrialized cities in the world), then for settlers who poured into Michigan from the East after the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825. The pines also supplied building material for the cities that began to spring up on the treeless Great Plains. By the turn of the century, the state's woodlands started to disappear. Timber barons soon transferred operations to the Pacific Northwest and left the exposed earth of Michigan to the farmers.

But some areas proved to be unsuitable for anything but forest. The farmers departed too, leaving much of the woodland to restore itself. Only in the southern half of the Lower Peninsula did agriculture thrive. Farmers who had abandoned the thin soil of New England settled here and built Yankee farmhouses. Thus visitors to the area may fell they have somehow strayed into a corner of Vermont.

ODDITIES AND SPECIALITIES OF THE MICHIGAN.

When Dr. John H. Kellogg of Battle Creek created cornflakes to serve as a nutritious dish for sanitarium patients, he started an industry. Today Battle Creek is the world's leading producer of breakfast cereals.

The southwest Michigan town of Holland is the only place in the U.S. where Dutch - originated delftware pottery is made.

Northern Michigan is the site of the National Mushroom Hunting Championship every May, when mushroom fanciers take to the woods to search out the prized morel mushrooms that grow there in profusion.

Despite its novelty, the reason for the naming of the Be God to Your Mother - in - Law Bridge (built in 1880 across the Black River in Croswell) has been lost in the mists if time.

Although Michigan is nicknamed the Wolverine State, the small, bearlike creatures are exceedingly rare there. The only ones most Michiganders ever see are in the Detroit Zoo.