BASIC PROBLEMS IN FOREST PATHOLOGY 



By Dr. E. P. Meinecke 

 Forest Pathologist, Bureau of Plant Industry 



Forest pathology deals with all factors causing loss in forest trees, 

 either in actual or prospective timber values. The more abnormal 

 the forest, the broader the field of forest pathology. Its problems are 

 intimately interwoven with the conversion of virgin abnormal forests 

 into regulated forests approaching the normal. It would have no 

 place in the hypothetical normal forest. 



The normal forest is distinctly an Old World concept of the ideal 

 forest, producing continuously a maximum of timber under given 

 conditions, allowance being made only for unavoidable loss. At the 

 time when the concept of the normal forest began to take more definite 

 shape, only the most conspicuous forms of damage to the forest, such 

 as insect calamities and timber rot in general were known. Long 

 before all the innumerable factors making for loss in the forest began 

 to be studied, the timber-producing forests of the Old World were 

 under management; that is, approaching the ideal of the normal 

 forest. Frequent thinnings and a short rotation worked, to a certain 

 degree, for sanitation and hygiene. Management incidentally reduced 

 a good deal of the avoidable loss, so much so that, in spite of the 

 admirable research work of men like Willkomm and Robert Hartig, 

 until more recently there seemed to exist no necessity for a conscious 

 and concerted effort to control this loss, and that the idea of factors 

 making for loss other than those governed by cultured methods hardly 

 entered the concept of the normal forest. 



In America we have, of course, taken our concepts from European 

 forestry and in all theoretical discussions the ideal normal forest 

 remains the pivotal point, as though we already were well on our 

 way towards regulation. In practical forestry outside of the relatively 

 small managed forests of the East, we have to do exclusively with 

 virgin forests, and here the practically attainable is, at least for many 

 years to come, so singularly out of proportion to the ideal that the 

 concept of the normal forest, except as a very remote goal, can only 

 create confusion. 



The difference is but one of point of view. The European forester 



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