216 JOURNAL OF FORESTRY 



is SO well advanced on the road towards an ideal clearly in sight, that 

 only those inevitable accidents which we call the factors of unavoidable 

 loss, should be able to prevent him from reaching the end. He has 

 no longer an excuse for neglecting avoidable loss. The American 

 forester is standing at the beginning of the trail, and dim is the light, 

 indeed, which guides his faltering steps in a general direction towards 

 an apparently unattainable ideal. His starting point is the virgin forest, 

 in which so far no injurious factor is controlled on a larger scale, 

 except that of fire. Locally insects have been kept in check and on 

 the relatively small-sales areas on the National Forests the introduc- 

 tion of the sanitation clause, where applied, has eliminated certain tree 

 diseases. Rarely has it been possible to influence the type by favoring 

 species best adapted to the physical factors of their surroundings, and 

 individual treatment of stands or trees through thinning or pruning 

 is still out of the question. 



Such intensive forestry cannot be expected at the present time 

 of the large timber owner, and the administration of the National 

 Forests must keep within the limits prescribed by legislation. 

 Obviously, this condition of affairs cannot last. The time will — 

 and must necessarily — come when our virgin forests, at least the 

 typically timber-producing, accessible parts of them, will be brought 

 under a management whose chief aim is an assured supply of timl)e - 

 on the basis of a sustained annual yield, timber meaning not maximum 

 volunie only, but maximum volume of sound and high grade lumber. 

 In other words, the forests of the future will be grown under condi- 

 tions in which the avoidable loss from physical as well as biological 

 factors is reduced to a minimum. It is plain that even an attempt at 

 such a control of avoidable loss is impossible without a thorough 

 knowledge of the behavior of the tree, the stand and the forest with 

 regard to controllable factors. Our present knowledge of these factors 

 themselves is very limited, much more so our understanding of the 

 economic role they are playing in the forest. Hardly half a century 

 has elapsed since the birth of modern silviculture, forest pathology, 

 and forest botany in general, and we still have to admit that we are 

 standing at the very threshold, that our understanding of the intricate 

 life of the forest is not sufficient to apply it directly to the problems 

 of the virgin forest. It is idle to predict the exact time at which 

 American forestry, in special American silviculture, will be able to 

 turn from a more negative, day to day policy to positive, constructive 



