426 Forestry Quarterly. 



not in one, but in several different new senses, thus inevitably in- 

 troducing the ambiguity referred to? 



The New Standard Dictionary publishes 13 distinct definitions 

 of "type," of which the following have a direct or remote bear- 

 ing upon the various uses in forestry which have been pro- 

 posed for the word : 



Type, n. — 3. One of a class or group of objects that 

 embodies the characteristics of the group or class; an 

 example, model, representative, or pattern, as of an 

 age, a school, or a stage of civilization; also a character- 

 istic style or kind ; as the blond "type" of beauty. 4. 

 Biol, (i) Plan of structure; a fundamental structure 

 common to a number of individuals; as, the vertebrate 

 type. (2) The ideal representation combining essential 

 characteristics, as of a species, genus, or family ; an 

 organism exhibiting the essential characteristics of its 



group 8. A plan 



to which proposed work or action should conform; 

 guiding style; specif., in the fine arts, an original ob- 

 ject or conception as the subject of copy. 



The first of these definitions is one which a person unfamiliar 

 with forest terms would be apt to understand by "forest type," 

 since it is in the sense of "a characteristic style or kind" that the 

 word is most commonly heard in general usage. But the authors 

 of the "Symposium" have used the word in all three of these 

 senses : ( i ) in the sense of "a characteristic style or kind," to 

 denote a "kind of forest," designated either by the principal 

 species which compose it or by the character of the land it oc- 

 cupies; (2) in the biological sense of "the ideal representation 

 combining essential characteristics," referring not to the essential 

 characteristics of individual trees as "types" of species or genera, 

 but, strangely, to those of the soil and climate; and (3) in the 

 sense of a "plan to which proposed work or action should con- 

 form," to designate a kind of forest which it is believed desirable 

 to produce. 



There are here three distinct meanings of the expression "for- 

 est type" — and there are possibly others. To assume that a 

 single technical term can be applied satisfactorily to ideas so 



