524 Forestry Quarterly 



Biolley in iconoclastic fashion declares the 

 Heresies conception of "normal stock" absurd and 



Regarding ' ' abnormal , ' ' and objects to the whole theory 



Normal of the normal forest. 



Stock Normal stock is a fata morgana, unknown 



to the French. Our knowledge of the com- 

 plex development of a forest is still too indefinite to permit us to 

 ''force free nature into the corset of a narrow absolute theory." 

 At length the author sneers at and ridicules the attempt to jibe 

 nature and theory. If it is impossible to secure a practical com- 

 parison between the normal and actual stock in pure forest, it is 

 still more so in mixed forest, Flury's "variable constant" {see 

 F. Q., XIII, p. 108) notwithstanding. Irregularities in mixed 

 stands are too unending, normal condition cannot be conceived. 

 The laudable desire of the formula methods to insure sustained 

 yield is not accomplished by guarding the normal stock, for this is, 

 after all, an unsafe, indeterminate quantity dependent on the arbi- 

 trarily chosen rotation; for rotation is a personal determination 

 of the manager. Again uncertainties arise from the practice of 

 measuring the actual stock only in the oldest age classes estimat- 

 ing the younger; moreover, from the data of the yield tables 

 arbitrary deductions are to be made for losses in logging, etc. 

 Hence normal stock in itself and as object of management is a 

 delusion besides involving two special defects in silvicultural and 

 in economic direction. 



The classical German conception of the normal stock ignores 

 the biological function of the actual stock, which depends on its 

 treatment, while the normal forest idea proposes (the author mis- 

 takenly asserts) to force its development according to a mere hypo- 

 thesis through its whole life: this formalism makes the normal 

 stock itself the end instead of means to an end — ^production; the 

 end product of management here is "determined by official pre- 

 scription;" the silvicultural moment is powerless. 



In discussing the biological function of the stock, the author 

 points out that while the tree has a limited life, the stand, the tree 

 association, lives forever: the tree does not live any more as single 

 individual but as part of a whole, each influencing the other. This 

 idea is elaborated and the need of recognizing the mutuality and of 

 working for increased increment is accentuated. "In not recog- 

 nizing this mutual relation between condition of stand and incre- 

 ment lies the silvicultural mistake of the normal stock theory." 



