News and Notes 645 



August 15. Up to the present all but one member of the sub- 

 committee have replied with criticisms and corrections. Reply 

 from this member should be received shortly, whereupon the 

 compiled comments will be issued to the entire subcommittee 

 for a vote. 



"Owing to the geographical position of the members of this 

 subcommittee, everything has had to be done by correspondence, 

 which, of course, involved delay. It has also been difficult to 

 get action during the field season. The tentative draft of the 

 terminology for Forest Organization includes 73 terms ; the one 

 for Forest Mensuration comprises 76 terms." 



One of the University members of this committee reports: 

 "Since receipt of draft with committee comments, our faculty has 

 held five two-hour (-f-) sessions, bringing out a tentative defi- 

 nition of 19 terms only — about an hour per term for the five of 

 us. We found that we did not know very much about our 

 own usages, that we differed among ourselves as to exact mean- 

 ing and practice, that it was necessary to re-define terms we 

 had thought finally done with, etc." Then, after elaborating on 

 the difficulties and the necessity of much work to come to any 

 conclusions, he continues: ''Our faculty has found the work so 

 interesting and profitable that we propose to go on through the 

 lists as rapidly as practicable — for our own benefits alone." 



Sub-section on Valuation, Administration and General Terms: 

 "It will be at once evident that the Valuation terms, or better 

 the Forest Finance terms are engrossing the bulk of the com- 

 mittee's effort, since the need for concise scientific definition is 

 greatest in finance. Exactly here is one of the weakest spots in 

 English forestry literature, so that this committee's task is not one 

 of the easiest. 



"This method of procedure is to construct a tentative alpha- 

 betical list of the terms needing definition, erring on the side 

 of too many terms rather than too few. A hasty review of the 

 English literature on the subject is made in doing this and the 

 terms admitting of ambiguous or conflicting use are specially 

 marked. This list is then used as a guide to the detailed work. 



"The committee endeavored to divide the work alphabetically, 

 and when the chairman has assembled the manuscripts, it is to 

 be submitted entire to each member of the committee for sug- 



