COMMENT. 



It is only fitting that Dr. Hugh P. Baker, one of Professor 

 Mayr's most recent students, should have extolled his master and 

 great teacher as he has in the appreciation which we have gladly 

 placed in the front of this issue. 



No one will deny that Prof. Mayr has been most fertile and 

 suggestive in his literary work, but the sober critic who did not 

 come under his personal sway and who did not know anything of 

 his personality except what was revealed in his writings will 

 probably be inclined to discount some of the praise. The one 

 thing that must impress an unbiased reader of Prof. Mayr's writ- 

 ings is, on the personal side, the self assertiveness warring against 

 all others, and, on the material side, the sometimes reckless as- 

 sertion of facts, the argument of ipse dixit, frequent inconsisten- 

 cies and unjustifiable generalizations, all of which make one hesi- 

 tate to accept at full value his conclusions. While he sought the 

 truth, his personal fame seemed dearer to him. Many unpleasant 

 literary scraps, which the American dislikes, but the German 

 seems unfortunately too often to court, stand to his credit, or 

 rather debit, and of his new doctrines many will not survive him 

 long. 



Mayr's last silvicultural proposition, for instance, — the mixed 

 forest in smallest stands — is one of them which we may designate 

 as stillborn, for even in the most intensively managed larger forest 

 administrations it would become entirely impractical. This is at 

 once apparent, if we contemplate that a 6,000 acre proposition in 

 80 year rotation, if it were divided according to Mayr into small 

 stands of say 5 acres, there would be 1,200 such stands, each of 

 which requiring, also according to Mayr's conception, thinnings 

 and final harvest cuts, altogether some 180 fellings annually, 

 besides underplantings and repair plantings of not less than 80 to 

 100 acres annually — a physically impracticable operation, not to 

 mention its cost. 



Nevertheless we do not mean to detract from Prof. Mayr's un- 

 questionable merit in having advanced silvicultural thought in a 

 more modern direction, in which he has, however, a number of 

 notable competitors. 



