Current Literature 719 



Forest Pathology in Forest Regulation. By E. P. Meinecke. 

 Bulletin 275, U. S. Department of Agriculture. Contribution 

 from the Bureau of Plant Industry. Washington, D. C. 1916. 

 Pp. 63. 



In this highly interesting, although somewhat diffuse, study the 

 author attempts to place on a high plane the importance of forest 

 pathology in influencing forest management, and especially in- 

 fluencing the determination of a rotation and felling cycle. 



The study can be divided into four sections: an introduction 

 which points out the difficulties still besetting the attempts at 

 introducing forestry methods and the lack of definite basis for such 

 methods; an elaboration in detail of methods of investigation in 

 forest pathological direction; an actual study of the pathology of 

 Abies concolor as a sample rather than with the expectation of 

 securing final results ; the application of the knowledge secured in 

 this particular study to the problems of forest management. 



We consider this an important and thoughtful attempt to link 

 practical issues with scientific investigation, even if we do not 

 feel inclined to go the whole way with the author. Much as we be- 

 lieve in the need of a thoroughly reliable basis for our forestry 

 practice, if the sectioning and careful study of 160 trees of one 

 species in one locality cannot be considered a sufficient basis for 

 determining even for that locality proper action, we must despair of 

 ever coming to conclusions. "The amount of work to be done is 

 enormous," the author says; we fear it is too enormous, and mean- 

 while, the practical world does not want to wait, and will preferably 

 rely on rough judgment in solving its problems. 



We cannot get away from the thought, at which the author hints 

 in some place, that forest pathology in the virgin forest progresses 

 differently from forest pathology in the cut and reproduced forest, 

 hence what the study of the first develops may not repeat itself in 

 the managed forest. Just the same experience applies to the 

 study of increment under the two conditions. 



In the introduction the author points out the difference between 

 our virgin forest and the managed European forest as an argimient 

 for the impracticability of applying European methods. But the 

 forest conditions there were not so very different from ours, when 

 these methods were being first developed. The author is right, 

 that even in scientific Germany forest management practically is 



