234 Forestry Quarterly. 



ney. One could probably arrive at his destination without such 

 careful planning, but the best way to shorten a long trip is to do 

 it. Nor are such plans ever iron-clad and unchangeable. Cer- 

 tainly if forestry is to take its rightful place among scientific sub- 

 jects its technical phases must be handled by scientific methods, 

 and among these that of critical analysis with the object of a 

 logical and therefore most useful classification of its parts is 

 essential. 



Re-marks on Above Article: by the Editor. 



We agree most decidedly with the author in the last sentence, 

 but we do not think that he has been altogether successful in 

 securing a logical classification, although he has used much lan- 

 guage in trying to secure it. 



The gist of his contention is that the term dendrology should 

 be confined to non-ecological parts of the knowledge. We fail 

 to see any logic in so circumscribing a self-explanatory term, 

 which means "all about trees." Such circumscription is merely 

 arbitrary, not forced by logic, and not acceptable or accepted. 

 Dendrology is merely a segregation from the general field of 

 botany of that part which concerns itself with trees. This part 

 can be considered, like any other vegetation, from various points 

 of view. 



The first point of view is from the standpoint of description of 

 the material : descriptive dendrology — which may confine itself to 

 the botanist's narrow point of view or extend to the dendrolo- 

 gist's more complete analysis, including even wood-structure. 



As a result of the descriptive knowledge, we come to dendro- 

 logical classification or taxonomy, a self-explanatory field of 

 botanical inquiry limited to trees. We next come to study trees 

 from the physiological point of view ; plant physiology with 

 special reference to the physiology of arborescent forms. Last 

 we may take up the biological (in the narrower German sense) 

 phenomena of tree life, which includes phaenology and ecology 

 of trees, i. e. a study of their cycle, of the causes of tree form, 

 of their habits, of their biological requirements on the environ- 

 ment, etc. 



This completes the whole field of dendrology. These subdi- 

 visions are, of course, nowhere strictly limitable, for Nature 

 defies our classification, which is only a device for limiting fields 



