A NATIONAL PLAN FOE AMERICAN FORESTRY 685 



ments of trees and types, on volumes and yields, and on the control 

 of forest fires have added to the assurance and certainty of efforts 

 made to grow, protect, and manage timber. So far, the publicly 

 owned national forests are the chief beneficiaries from the application 

 of these results, but here and there also is a private owner. On the 

 national forests application is at its best in fire control, for example, 

 and follows research findings even before these have been recorded in 

 progress report form, and in some instances the same is true of silvi- 

 cultural methods. 



The main contributions of forest range investigations, knowledge 

 of the range plants and of their growth habits and forage values, the 

 determination of a few important principles of range management, 

 and, finally, the relationships between range use and forest regenera- 

 tion, have also found their main application in national forest adminis- 

 tration. Improvements in herding and bedding methods for han- 

 dling sheep have, however, been rather generally adopted by the 

 livestock industry on other ranges. 



By far the largest application of the rather meager but significant 

 findings to date on the indirect influences of forest and other forms 

 of wild vegetative cover has also been on the national forests and for 

 the use of forest or other cover as a means for controlling erosion or 

 regulating stream flow by many municipalities and here and there a 

 private corporation. The findings have to some extent been respon- 

 sible for efforts toward sounder policies for other forest and public 

 domain administration. 



In the forest-products field, progress has been greater and more 

 diversified mainly because larger funds have been available. The 

 benefits from application in the forest industries, which have been 

 very large, soon reach the ultimate consumer at one extreme and the 

 owner of forest land at the other. And the public which owns the 

 National and State forests is by far the largest single owner. Kiln 

 drying of lumber has been revolutionized, as has also preservative 

 treatment of wood against decay, the technique of naval-stores 

 extraction, and wood-container design. Large numbers of pulp 

 and paper mills are using improved pulping processes, several new 

 mills have been built to utilize new processes, and the number of 

 species in common use is gradually being extended. 



The data on strength properties for nearly all American species 

 and the factors, such as moisture, which govern them have been 

 determined and are being rather generally applied. A scientific 

 basis for the grading of structural timbers has been adopted for a 

 limited number of species, and worth-while contributions have been 

 made to the standardization and simplification of lumber grading. 

 Principles of design in houses and other forms of building construc- 

 tion and in joints and fastenings have been less fully worked out and 

 much less widely applied than those for containers. 



Results which have not yet gone far enough for extensive applica- 

 tion include the breaking down of wood into component groups such 

 as cellulose; the microscopic and submicroscopic study of structure 

 and the relation of structure to properties, and studies of the relation 

 of growth conditions to specific gravity and hence to strength. 



The economic data obtained in the three extensive forest surveys 

 of the entire United States and other economic studies are more or 

 less widely used as a background in the formulation of forest policies, 



