History of Forest Ecology 427 



from the study of vegetation to the investigation of the under- 

 lying causes of vegetative units. The works of Schimper, Warm- 

 ing and Drude are the best examples of the present trend of the 

 science. 



Silvicultiu-e, on the other hand, began as a practice based upon 

 empiricism. When forest ecology was founded in 1758 the fimda- 

 mental sciences began to put silviculture upon a scientific basis. 

 Diuing the last half of the 18th and the first half of the 19th cen- 

 turies the tendency was to investigate tree and forest problems 

 from the ecological point of view. As a result forest botany, 

 forest pathology, forest entomology, and the anatomy and physi- 

 ology of woody plants developed. At the beginning of the 19th 

 century silviculture received its first scientific treatment at the hands 

 of the fathers of modern forestry — Hartig and Cotta. Modern 

 forest ecology was inaugurated when the forest experiment 

 stations were established in 1870, and thereupon began a new era 

 for silviculture. These stations forthwith began the task of 

 basing silvicultural practice upon experiments. The investigative 

 attitude began to pervade every phase of forestry. In this new 

 era the investigations of forest ecology were brought into play to 

 explain not only every observation deaHng with the individual tree 

 and the forest formation, but also every silvicultural practice. 

 The application of modern forest ecology has found its highest 

 expression in the recent works of Mayr, Wagner and Duesberg 

 and in the controversy that developed between two opposite 

 schools of silviculttual thought. 



Thus it will be seen that three centuries before the corner-stone 

 of plant ecology was laid the practice of silviculture upon an 

 empirical basis began and that even during this early period the 

 applied phases of many ecological problems were known to foresters 

 About 80 years before plant ecology was founded the science of 

 forest ecology had its beginning, when the fundamental sciences 

 were applied to the study of the relation of the forest to its habitat. 

 Plant ecologists began the determination of habitat factors in 

 1895, but foresters took such data at meteorological stations in 

 connection with the study of forest influences between 1860 and 

 1870. In the study of this phase of ecology, therefore, forest ecology 

 antedates plant ecology by more than 30 years. In spite of their 

 interrelation, the two sciences developed independently; plant 

 ecology chiefly along purely scientific lines and forest ecology 



