660 A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 



local interest and closer contact with local conditions, they were 

 finally abandoned because of excessive costs in equipment and per- 

 sonnel, including overhead, difficulties in the correlation of research, 

 etc. 



Under the existing organization in the Department of Agriculture, 

 some classes of forest research are assigned to other bureaus than 

 the Forest Service, and the field units described have the further 

 advantage of permitting cooperative effort and a unified, well-rounded- 

 out or group attack on the entire forest problem. Under this plan 

 forest pathologists from the Bureau of Plant Industry, have been 

 assigned to the Forest Products Laboratory, and pathologists from 

 Plant Industry, forest entomologists from the Bureau of Entomology, 

 and biologists from the Biological Survey have been assigned to 

 several of the regional stations. The number is being gradually 

 increased. All work under the direction of their own bureaus. 



Since the basic interrelationship and unity of all classes of forest 

 research is becoming increasingly apparent, more detailed illustration 

 of the manner in which it is being recognized is justified, although this 

 will involve some repetition of what has already been said. It has 

 been necessary to provide for forest products research at some of our 

 forest experiment stations, primarily on problems which have im- 

 portant local silvicultural aspects, such as the utilization phase of 

 selective logging or mill-scale studies. The work on silvicultural 

 problems at the Forest Products Laboratory, already mentioned, has 

 led to the establishment of a Section of Silvicultural Relations. One 

 of the important problems on which this section is working is the bio- 

 chemistry of naval stores, a borderline problem which might be 

 assigned either to the Southern Forest Experiment Station or to the 

 Forest Products Laboratory, depending upon exigencies of finances, 

 personnel, etc. Both the regional stations and the Section of Silvi- 

 cultural Relations are certain to work on physiological problems. 

 The laboratory and the stations are already in numerous instances 

 joining forces in working out the relationship between growing condi- 

 tions and the properties and quality of the final product, and in time 

 this will be true in practically every forest region. Research in forest 

 economics must inevitably be conducted at both the regional forest 

 experiment stations and the Forest Products Laboratory. The Forest 

 Survey is a large and important economic investigation which illu- 

 strates the interrelationship between silvicultural and products in- 

 vestigations and bridges in still another way any apparent gap be- 

 tween the forest experiment stations and the Forest Products Labora- 

 tory. In some of its aspects, such as the determination of actual and 

 potential growth, it is closely related to and in fact merges into, the 

 silvical research of the experiment stations, and in other of its aspects, 

 such as present and probable future requirements for timber, is 

 closely related to and merges into the work of the Forest Products 

 Laboratory. 



The range and silvicultural investigations at the regional experiment 

 stations run together in such projects as the adaptations of range 

 management necessary to insure reproduction of species like pon- 

 derosa pine, and as the influence of the vegetative cover where forest 

 and forage plants occur in combination. 



The growing realization of this unity and of the necessity of pro- 

 viding for it in investigative programs, in the administration of re- 



