224 JOURNAL OF FORESTRY 



Obviously the only logical way out of the dilemma is to couple 

 forest sanitation with forest hygiene; that is, to regard an area taken 

 under treatment by a first cutting as part of the regulated forest of 

 the future, after thorough sanitation to continue the treatment in 

 regular intervals and to prevent by all means reversion to the virgin 

 forest type. 



It is deeply to be regretted that for the present, at least, there is 

 no immediate hope for such a course. The private owner of timber- 

 lands can hardly be expected to express his active interest in the 

 future through heavy, in fact, prohibitive, financial sacrifices, and 

 activities on National Forests are necessarily limited to those author- 

 ized by law, consisting mainly in utilization of accumulated values, in 

 planting and protection from fire. 



The outlook at the present is far from encouraging and still no 

 one doubts that the advent of forest regulation is inevitable. If the 

 character of contemporaneous publications and periodicals counts for 

 anything, the profession is deeply interested in this phase of develop- 

 ment. But one cannot help seeing that wherever speculation tries to 

 break away from European precedent as based on the accomplished 

 fact of regulation, it is hampered by the lack of a solid foundation, of 

 knowledge as the only basis for understanding. 



Forest regulation is unthinkable without forest sanitation and 

 forest hygiene; that is, practical forest pathology. Forest sanitation 

 applies to the untouched virgin forest, the wild forest, so to speak. 

 For this reason America cannot look to Europe for information and 

 instruction. Sanitation came to European forests gradually, through 

 centuries, without the help of science. Forest hygiene is practiced in 

 European forests as a matter of routine, inseparable from the concept 

 of regulation. The period of transition, the conversion of virgin into 

 regulated forests in Europe, is past history. To the American forester 

 it is, next to the utilization of accumulated timber values, the one 

 great and pressing problem. In the solution of this problem American 

 forestry must stand on its own feet. 



This much is certain, that forest sanitation and forest hygiene, 

 the elimination and the control of avoidable injurious factors, must 

 play a far more eminent role during the period of transition than was 

 ever assigned to them in Europe, and that for this reason silviculture 

 in America must be closely linked with forest pathology. 



The great problems of forest pathology are those of silviculture 

 during the period of transition from virgin to regulated forests. 



