788 A NATIONAL PLAN FOB AMERICAN FORESTRY 



its rightful place in the general scheme of agricultural extension. 

 There is a further weakness in the fact that forestry extension special- 

 ists receive most of their supervision, advice, and direction from men 

 not intimately familiar with forest practices and forestry aims. Being 

 attached to a service which has little primary contact with the forest 

 problem, the extension forester is often detached from the general 

 current of forest ideas. An additional difficulty is that most of his 

 work is done through county agricultural agents, 4-H Club leaders, 

 and to some extent home demonstration agents, whose time is too 

 fully occupied with other projects to leave room for much attention 

 to forestry unless their interest in it is rather exceptional. Few 

 county agents have had the kind of training necessary to give them a 

 balanced land use attitude or a practical understanding of the methods 

 of forestry. The State colleges might well give more care to seeing 

 to it that those preparing for county agent work in the naturally 

 forested regions receive specific preparation for farm forestry work. 

 In Louisiana this is now required. 



The forestry extension specialist is supposed to work in cooperation 

 with the State forestry department and in many if not most cases he 

 does so freely and fully, but the contact is usually not close enough 

 to obviate the danger that two independent agencies will be engaged 

 on the same forestry problem, with insufficient coordination of effort 

 and advice. This danger should by all means be averted. It can be 

 if the work of the forestry extension specialist in each State and the 

 work of the State forestry department can be closely enough correlated. 



The full field of forestry extension includes not only farm woodland 

 owners but other timberland owners. An adequate extension set-up 

 would require provision for reaching both effectively, under a unified 

 plan. With such a set-up, Federal funds for forestry extension could 

 well be increased in some proportion to the magnitude of the area and 

 the problems confronting the forest owner. 



RESEARCH 



When it began to appear, as the nineteenth century wore along, 

 that the country would be faced with a forest problem of large pro- 

 portions, the need for better knowledge of our forests, forest resources, 

 and forest requirements was borne in upon most of those who gave 

 the subject any attention at all. This was the more natural because 

 the forestry movement of the latter half of the nineteenth century 

 was greatly influenced by scientific thought, was largely led by 

 scientific men, and was promoted by scientific organizations. 



DEVELOPMENT AND FUNCTIONS OF FOREST RESEARCH 



The most outstanding fact in the early situation was that no one 

 knew what ought to and could be done. That the forests of the 

 country were being destroyed, that the current practices of utiliza- 

 tion must somehow be altered, that timber growing must be brought 

 about to provide for future requirements, and that some form of 

 public action was needed were matters concerning which intelligent 

 opinion tended to coincide. But when it came to practical remedies, 

 everything was involved in uncertainties. 



There was not even an approach to knowledge of the amount of 

 standing timber in the United States, the rate at which it was being 



