798 JOURNAL OF FORESTRY 



was reported recently editorially in the Experiment Station Record.' 

 In the words of the editor of that journal, Dr. Bailey, commenting upon 

 the kind of men necessary for research and experimentation work, said : 

 "His training must give him a contemplative, reflective habit of thought, 

 and he should always continue to be a student. Unless he continues to 

 acquire much of his preparation as he goes, his research spirit has got 

 its growth." 



The student habit is therefore one of the most important character- 

 istics of the research type of man. Yet on the other hand this charac- 

 teristic is wholly unsuited to the administrator and manager. 



The research type is not apt to enjoy jobs of large dimensions, such 

 as managing a National Forest, but he is more likely to feel at home at 

 small intensive jobs, such as fussing or tinkering with minute mechan- 

 isms or instruments. In daily life we have just these two types in the 

 bridge-builder or the railway engineer and in the watchmaker. The 

 research type is apt to go to pieces in an emergency, but if given suffi- 

 cient time will usually act wisely and well. He has slow mental co- 

 ordination ; he must have time to reason things out logically. The 

 administrative type, if he is an average one, usually has rapid mental 

 co-ordination and knows just exactly what to do in a crisis. From the 

 nature of his duties, he must blend into any environment and adapt 

 himself to any emergency. The research type is often inflexible and 

 slowly or with great difficulty adapts himself to circumstances. Re- 

 search men must, above all, be original, and this type of man usually 

 lacks the directive mind. Original men make good designers or artists, 

 but usually very poor superintendents or managers. We often find 

 research men mentally efficient, but manually rather inefficient. It is 

 not often that mental and manual accuracy go together. We know 

 from experience that the best workmen often make the worst foremen. 



I do not mean to say that the two types of men are never found in 

 the same person. They are, but these cases are the exception. In the 

 vast majority of cases they are not, and that explains the futility of 

 expecting to find a good research man and a good administrator in the 

 same person. Moreover, I do not mean to say that all research men 

 are born as such. I think that a large majority of men can be trained 

 to do research if the training begins early enough and is reasonably 

 thorough. 



It seems to me, if the forestry schools hope to train research men 

 and the Forest Service employ them, these characteristics must be taken 



Editorial, Experiment Station Record, 36: i, pp. 9, 1917. 



