232 Forestry Quarterly. 



the curriculum. Silvics, with its immense significance for the 

 attainment of substantial scientific results in forest investigations, 

 remains, in its lack of scientific organization, one of the least 

 developed technical branches of American forestry. 



Structural dendrology includes a consideration of the external 

 features and structural elements of wood ; the value of macro- 

 scopic and microscopic characteristics in identification and classi- 

 fication; and the classification and identification of commercial 

 woods. If dendrology is the science of trees then the study of 

 wood structure belongs to it rather than to the srudy of forest 

 products, which, as its title indicates, would be confined to the 

 branches of wood technology or the application of wood in the 

 arts, and to timber physics or the physical and chemical proper- 

 ties of wood and minor forest products, both havmg to do with 

 the woody product, while the structural features of the wood 

 itself is more closely related to the science of the trees them- 

 selves. 



Critical Bxaminaiion — Not Pedagogical Discussion. 



It should be distinctly understood that this paper presents a 

 short critical analysis of the subject of dendrology, with some 

 necessary preliminary explanation of the rest of forest botany, 

 i. e. the ecological science of silvics, in order to make clear their 

 relations', and does not present an outline of a plan for teaching 

 dendrology. Hence it is not within the province of the article 

 to discuss the various methods of presenting the dififerent parts 

 of the subject to students. How many species' within different 

 genera or groups of genera should be included for typical rep- 

 resentation in a course in biologic or in geographic dendrology 

 belongs to another topic altogether. The teaching of the differ- 

 ent subdivisions must ever be subject to the exigencies of par- 

 ticular cases, and, quite aside from the needs of any particular 

 curriculum, the successful presentation of any part of the subject 

 will, of course, always depend upon the individual initiative of 

 the instructor. It seems, however, a ripe time for an endeavor 

 to establish certain fundamental principles as to the scope of 

 the subject that shall be abreast with the best present-day devel- 

 opment. On the one hand it is highly desirable that foresters 

 shall not confine the subject of dendrology to its systematic as- 

 pect alone, nor solely to its systematic and geographic aspects, 



