A DECIMAL CLASSIFICATION FOR FORESTRY -LITERATURE 451 



3. Practical rather than theoretical. 



4. Brief and familiar in its nomenclature. 



5. Capable of (almost) unlimited expansion, admirably adapted to 

 the needs of the student or specialist. 



It is considered desirable to make the proposed scheme for forestry 

 form a part of the widely used Dewey decimal classification because 

 of greater consistency and expediency when auxiliary subjects are 

 considered. It is hoped that this may be done without too great a 

 sacrifice of the logical coordination of the subject matter of forestry. 

 It is very essential that at least the major portion of any scheme pro- 

 posed for the use of professional foresters be logically coordinated. 

 In drafting a classification of any subject the author should be ever 

 mindful of where a user would naturally look first for the material. 

 Dewey, in his decimal system of classification, places forestry subordi- 

 nate to horticulture. Forestry should at least be coordinate with horti- 

 culture and only through an enforced definition can forestry be made 

 subordinate to agriculture. This position is fully justified when one 

 considers the great advancement which has been made, and the great 

 mass of literature which is rapidly accumulating in the science of 

 forestr}^ However, the integral number to the left of the decimal has 

 been omitted in the proposed scheme in order that it may be more 

 easily adapted to any library system. 



This scheme is intended to serve a dual purpose, not only for 

 compilation, either as a general or a more specialized outline, which 

 will be its greatest utility, but also as a cataloging scheme. By making 

 the scheme sufficiently detailed to adequately meet the needs of in- 

 tensive specialization in any branch of the subject, it should be 

 applicable to the requirements of practically every member of the 

 profession. The specialist can go through the scheme and merely 

 choose the captions which he will have occasion to use and disregard 

 the others, without serious difficulty or confusion. This will permit 

 each to use minute subdivisions where desired or needed without 

 being forced into refinements in subjects on which they have a small 

 amount of material or little interest. 



As stated above, the scheme is also adapted to the cataloging of 

 libraries by subjects. The detail desired in any library catalog can 

 be regulated by going through the. outline and selecting those headings 

 which it is desired to use. The Cutter system of individual author 

 numbers is, of course, to be used in conjunction with the decimal 



