790 A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 



Scientific research ordinarily implies a methodized procedure and 

 uses as its most effective tool rigorously controlled experiment. 

 Forest research is now organized and systematized; and some would 

 draw a line of demarcation between what is fully entitled to be called 

 forest research because it employs the method of controlled experi- 

 ment and what is merely the accumulation of knowledge through 

 observation of what goes on in the ordinary sequence of uncontrolled 

 natural events. 



Historically, such a distinction does not fit. Forest research of 

 the present day has been built up from the early observational study 

 of the American forest of its composition, behavior, relationships, 

 services, and possible products and of the effects upon it of cultural 

 methods or of lumbering, grazing, fire, and other forms of human or 

 natural interference together with inquiries, chiefly of a statistical 

 character, relating to forest economics, and with the beginnings of 

 laboratory experimental work on wood as a material. 



In the initiation of these investigations and the opening up of the 

 field for forest research the States took an active part. An example 

 is the work carried on in Ohio for a few years by the forestry depart- 

 ment created in 1885 and centering at the State university. Still 

 more striking is the investigative program formulated and pursued 

 for a time by the California Forestry Department dating from the 

 same year; this included the setting up of two forest experiment 

 stations the first ever started in the United States. Kansas set up 

 two experimental tree-planting stations. A number of States as- 

 signed to their geological surveys investigations of their forest re- 

 sources. The work of botanists connected with State institutions 

 also calls for recognition. And when, after the turn of the century, 

 State foresters began to be appointed, their task was to a considerable 

 extent investigational. Indeed, in those days every cutting or plant- 

 ing operation carried out in accordance with a forester's prescription 

 partook of the nature of an experiment; and the chief means by which 

 a basis was created for American silviculture was woods observation 

 by the first generation of trained foresters. 



While the investigational quality, and indeed purpose, of the first 

 applications of technical forestry by both Federal and State foresters 

 justify classing much of this early work as forest research in a broad 

 sense, time has wrought a great change. Silyicultural practices, 

 it must be admitted, still often lack a firm basis of certainty as to 

 what will be the outcome of this or that course, and management 

 policies must too much grope their way, with opportunism taking 

 the place of long-range planning; but the professional forester engaged 

 in managing a forest property is essentially a practitioner, not an 

 explorer of the unknown. On the other hand, forest research has 

 become organized and implemented for careful, systematic work; 

 its pioneer stage has been left behind. It is under the necessity of 

 covering a field of enormous range and complexity, demanding the 

 work of specialists in many different fields of scientific knowledge. 

 It has turned away in the main from broad, superficial investigations 

 yielding immediately serviceable approximations, to engage in much 

 narrower but deeper studies designed to obtain precise information 

 on details. This is true even though the advance in this direction 

 has been less than would be desirable. There remains too large an 

 unfilled need for approximate information, and the resources available 



