2i8 Forestry Quarterly. 



be required of a Forest Assistant before he can be permanently 

 assigned to an experiment station. 



The number and training of men on the scientific staff will 

 obviously be determined by the amount and character of work 

 carried on. The director and one assistant, who will be called 

 upon to take charge in the absence of the director, must have at 

 least ordinary administrative ability. In addition, if the amount 

 of work warrants, one or more purely technical men may be 

 employed. For detailed work involving comparatively little 

 judgment and responsibility, young men of incomplete scientific 

 training can be used to good advantage. Forestry students are 

 as a rule exceedingly ambitious and energetic, and on work 

 more or less routine in character, requiring physical activity 

 rather than scientific knowledge, they are often more efficient 

 than older men of higher technical training. But the mistake 

 of placing students in positions requiring training and experience 

 should be avoided. Two technical men assisted by one or two 

 students generally constitute a more effective force than one 

 technical man assisted by three or four students. 



A common mistake of technical men is to devote too much of 

 their time to work which can be performed more economically by 

 a common laborer. Often such work is necessary as, for in- 

 stance, when the amount of work does not warrant employing 

 a laborer; but it is clearly poor economy for a $1,200 technical 

 man to spend much of his time building fences, digging ditches 

 or packing burros, when the same work can be done better by a 

 laborer employed at $2.50 per day. The above does not apply 

 to students who generally receive no more pay than a laborer, 

 and who can often be employed temporarily at manual labor 

 when not needed on scientific work. 



The greatest need of the scientific branch of the Forest Ser- 

 vice is for higher scientific standards in the personnel. For- 

 esters must be developed within the profession, and since forestry 

 is new in this country few of our scientific men rank with the 

 leaders in the older scientific professions. To remedy the situa- 

 tion, men of high training and ability are needed who will de- 

 vote their lives to forest research. 



Forest experiment stations should in years to come represent 

 the highest scientific talent in the Forest Service. The personnel 

 should be made up of specialists. The director of a station 



