REPORT ON THE SECTION OF FORESTRY COLLECTIONS 

 IN THE l'. S. NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1889. 



By B. E. Ferxow, Honorary Curator. 



The establishment in April of this year of a section of forestry col- 

 lections in the National Museum is an event, significant in so far as it 

 recognizes the existence of forestry as an art worthy of representation 

 in a museum. I believe that there is no such special section to be 

 found in any other great museum of the world, and my report may 

 therefore properly consist in the justification of this new branch of 

 museum work, a brief outline of what such forestry collections should 

 contain, and how they are to be classified. 



Forestry is an art in the same sense as agriculture, and comprises 

 all that part of human activity which concerns it sell" with the produc- 

 tion of timber and the management of the artificial or natural forest as 

 a crop, or for its beneficial influences upon other conditions of life. 



The basis of all forestry is of course the growth of trees. Yet its 

 sphere must not be confounded or mixed up with that of the horticult- 

 urist, or the orchardist, or the landscape gardener, who use trees for 

 ornamental purposes or for their fruit. The aim as well as the methods 

 of the forester are distinct from those of these other branches of arbori- 

 culture, and the scope of forestry is as distinctive. 



Forestry may be said to be the latest art invented by human intelli- 

 gence, and practiced only by fully civilized people with reference to 

 the use of the soil ; and its development ami extent of application may 

 be fairly considered as a measure, if not of the intellectual, yet, of the 

 cultural development of a country. 



Willi the growth of population grow the demands on the products of 

 the soil, and the most prolitable use of soils for the production of food 

 and for other necessities — the relegation of the soil to proper uses — 

 becomes the problem of a nation which lives and progresses intelli- 

 gently. 



We find, therefore, in the most densely populated regions the cult- 

 ural arts most highly developed; and in ;i country like Germany, it is 

 only wise and providential policy with regard to flic use of the soil, 

 which makes the subsistence of an ever-increasing population on a con- 



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