SOCIETY AFFAIRS 489 



The evening session, which lasted from 7.30 until a late hour, and the 

 following morning session of four hours were entirely devoted to a dis- 

 cussion of experimental forest sample plots. The desirability of estab- 

 lishing such plots was taken for granted ; no discussion on that point. 

 A preliminary plan for collecting the desired data on sample plots was 

 presented to the meeting, and it was discussed point by point through- 

 out the evening. In the end it was decided to confine the sample-]:)lot 

 investigations to the determination of the actual increment after log- 

 ging in feet board measure or in cubic feet on a unit area. This in- 

 volves little beside the periodic measurement of height and diameter 

 growth and the death rate in the different diameter classes. 



It was recognized that sample-plot investigation, for purposes of con- 

 venient applicability, may fall under two heads, namely: (i) a simple 

 record of w'hat will happen under certain conditions, and (2) why it 

 happens — why things are as they are. It was conceded that the lum- 

 berman is interested only in the data collected under the first head. 

 He simply wants to know what the result will be in terms of another 

 crop if he logs in a certain manner; he is interested only in results, not 

 in causes. On the other hand, the forester who is charged with the 

 management of the forest is interested -both in results and in their 

 causes, for he must niodify the natural conditions, if necessary, in order 

 to regulate the future yield. Therefore, it was decided at the confer- 

 ence to establish during the coming summer some thirty-five sample 

 plots in the Adirondacks on which only growth increment and condi- 

 tions for regeneration should be recorded through a series of vears. 



Co-operative arrangements have already been made with private 

 lumber concerns and with the New York Commission of Conservation 

 (on State lands) for collecting the data on the plots. 



Later a much smaller number of plots would be established in the 

 two principal forest types — the hardwood lands and the spruce slope — 

 on which an attem])t would be made to explain the causes for given 

 conditions by a detailed study of the fashioning environmental factors, 

 such as light, exposure, evaporation, character of the soil, insect and 

 fungous diseases, etc. 



A committee of five, one representative each from Cornell Univer- 

 sity, the New York State College of Forestry at Syracuse, and the 

 State Conservation Commission, and two representing the lumber com- 

 panies, was chosen and charged with carrying out the details of the 

 sample-])lot work. 



This committee plans to select the sites and lay out the sanii)Ie plots 

 during the last half of May, 191S. 



