CONSIDERATIONS IN SII.VICULTURAL RKSIvARCIl 883 



assistant district forester in Silviculture, the district forester, the chief 

 of Forest Investigations at Washington, the assistant forester in Re- 

 search, and finally the Forester himself constitute the administrative 

 mill. After the grinding process has been completed, what is left of 

 the director's original ideas? It seems to me if the director is capable 

 of running an experiment station, he certainly is deserving of more 

 freedom and more confidence on the part of the higher officials than 

 has been accorded him in the past. Even admitting that a certain 

 amount of standardization and sifting-out of important problems is 

 necessary in order to avoid duplication and other forms of wasted 

 energy, the fact remains that this can still be done with about one-third 

 of the overhead supervision that is today burdening the directors of the 

 forest experiment stations. 



This is another important question which should receive immediate 

 attention at the hands of an advisory committee on forestry research, 

 namely: How many and which of the present administrative officials 

 are absolutely necessary to administrate the Forest Service experiment 

 stations? The research work of the Government forest experiment 

 stations of the near future, in my opinion, must be organized under a 

 director and a staff of competent research men. with overhead admin- 

 istration reduced to a minimum. 



The future interests of silvical and silvicultural research require a 

 far-sighted policy — one which will lay the cornerstone of research for 

 generations to come. To my way of thinking, state forest experiment 

 stations connected with our state colleges aft'ord the best means for 

 putting such a policy into effect. Moreover, the general recognition of 

 the rapidly increasing value to the public of state-supported research 

 work points to tiie inauguration of state forest experiment stations on 

 a large scale. State and federal money has been appropriated in the 

 past for agricultural experiment stations and more recently for mines 

 experiment stations, and a proposition for engineering cx]K'riment sta- 

 tions is under consideration. The ideal towards which wc must work 

 is a state forest experiment station connected with a state forest school 

 in each important forest region of the country. If intensive forestry 

 development demands it, one school and a station in connection with it 

 should be organized in every State in the Tnion. These forest experi- 

 ment stations will be in exactly the same relation to the forest rv school 

 as our present agricultural experiment stations arc to the agricultural 

 colleges. These forest exi)eriment stations will be supported i)artly bv 

 the individual state and partly by the Government, and tliov will take 

 up for solution in a thorough, scientific manner, under a director and a 



