graves: place of forestry among sciences 45 



understanding of such mutual adjustments that the forester is 

 capable of intelligently handling the fojest. With the great 

 number of species that are found in this country, with the great 

 variety in climatic and other physical factors which influence the 

 form of the forest, it is self-evident that there are many forest 

 communities, each with distinctive biological characteristics, 

 which offer a wide field for scientific inquiry. Amid the great 

 volume of administrative phases of the work in the Forest Service 

 this main objective has never been lost sight of in handling the 

 National Forests. The Forest Service is now spending nearly 

 1300,000 annually for research work; it maintains eight forest 

 experiment stations and one thoroughly equipped forest products 

 laboratory, and is doing this work solely to study the fundamental 

 laws governing the life of the forest and their effect upon the final 

 product — wood. 



Forestry may be called tree sociology and occupies among 

 natural sciences the same position as sociology among human- 

 istic sciences. Sociology may be based upon the physiological 

 functions of man as a biological individual. A physician, how- 

 ever, is not a sociologist, and social phenomena can be understood 

 and interpreted only in the light of sociological knowledge. So 

 also with forestry. Forestry depends upon the anatomy and 

 physiology of plants, but it is not applied anatomy and physiology 

 of plants. With foresters, anatomy and physiology of plants is 

 not the immediate end but enters only as one of the essential 

 parts without which it is impossible to grasp the processes that 

 take place in the forest. 



As the science of tree societies, forestry really is a part of the 

 larger science dealing with plant associations, yet its develop- 

 ment was entirely independent of botanical geography. When 

 the need arose for the rational handling of timberlands, no 

 science of plant association was in existence. Foresters were 

 compelled to study the biology of the forest by the best methods 

 available; they used the general scientific methods of investiga- 

 tion and developed their own methods when the former proved 

 inadequate. I am frank to admit that the present knowledge of 

 plant associations in botany has not yet reached a point where 



