EDITORIAL COMMENT 



Correction 



An error unfortunately occurred in the editorial entitled "Is Public 

 Purchase of Private Timberlands the Only Solution?" published in 

 the February Journai, of Forestry, which we hasten to correct. The 

 resolution upon which the editorial comments, as originally written and 

 debated, contains the word "saw" material — not "raw" material, as 

 printed, in the Journal. The typographical error occurs both on page 

 192 and again at the top of page 222. This typographical error, how- 

 ever, does not afifect the validity of our argument. 



S11.V1CULTURAL Problems 



Several contributions in the recent issues on silvicultural problems 

 exhibit strikingly the modern method of approaching their solution by 

 painstaking detail statistical inquiry. 



When 150 years ago Oettelt proved the thesis that "mathematics 

 could be made useful to foresters," he probably hardly realized that 

 this truth extended even to silviculture. Wholesale observation and 

 judgment were then the guides of the silviculturist, just as in medicine 

 and all other art and business that had to do with nature, and although 

 exact research has advanced these arts, no doubt, general observation 

 and judgment must still form a large share of the equipment of the 

 practitioner. While we welcome the precise methods of the plant ecolo- 

 gist, which seek to establish the sure basis for the practice of silvi- 

 culture, we must caution him against the danger of omitting the ob- 

 servation of factors in the problems which are historical and hence 

 W^ithdrawn from his direct observation and of premature deductions. 

 There are, for instance, two such factors in natural regeneration which 

 may explain the result or tw^o unlike results under otherwise precisely 

 similar conditicms. The one is the occurrence or non-occurrence of a 

 seed year ; the other is the weather at the time of germination and for 

 the first two or three years. 



Especially the latter factor, varying from one locality to another, 

 and, moreover, varying in its importance, is difficult to give proper 

 values for co-ordination. This explains, also, the observation of Dr. 

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