526 Forestry Quarterly 



6. The Time a Forester Necessarily Devotes to Office Work. 

 The ordinary duties of foresters are alike in kind but differ in 



degree. All have office work and forest work, but the amount of 

 office work some have far exceeds that of others. The apportion- 

 ment of time for forest work and office work helps to determine 

 the area which one forester can handle. The office work of a 

 forester is diversified, consisting of such items as correspondence, 

 reports, bookkeeping, making of working plans, utilization 

 plans, and planting plans, preparing cost reports of prospective 

 operations, advertising and reporting wood sales, etc. A 

 certain amount of office work for a forester is natural, but 

 too much means that his work in the forest is managed poorly 

 or given into the hands of a subordinate, in which case the 

 forester plays simply the role of an inspector, which is very 

 unsatisfactory. In cases of excessive office work a clerk, either 

 permanent or temporary, depending upon the amount of office 

 work, should be supplied. Up-to-date equipment should be 

 found in the office of every forester to facilitate office work. 

 The office work upon some of the State Forests of Pennsylvania 

 is starting to become burdensome. It will become more burden- 

 some as the management becomes more intense. Conditions are 

 not different in Germany. An accurate diary kept by a conscien- 

 tious Forstmeister shows that he spent during the year only 133 

 days of 9.4 hours each in the forest and 128 days at office work. 

 A forester who must spend one-half of his time in the office cer- 

 tainly cannot manage as large an area as one who spends only 

 one-fourth of his time there. A forester should spend at least 4 

 whole days per week or their equivalent supervising in person his 

 forest activities. 



7. Auxiliary Duties of the Forester. 



A forester who has no duties aside from those on the State 

 Forest upon or near which he is located, can manage a larger area 

 than if he has many or extensive outside duties. A forester may 

 devote little or much time to informing the public concerning the 

 importance of forestry, to assisting private owners in developing 

 their woodlands, in cooperating with the numerous Fire Pro- 

 tective Associations which have sprung up in recent years. In 

 some forests considerable time may be devoted to the location and 

 supervision of camp sites, while in others little time may be re- 



