1426 A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 



produced by drought. They must often be stimulated and assisted 

 to test comparatively the various alternative preventive measures in 

 order to determine which is best and most economical on their local 

 soils and for their local conditions. 



For the general run of diseases of older stands, either planted or 

 natural, service in control application should be developed, but only 

 as fast as the knowledge obtained by the research workers becomes 

 extensive enough to warrant the practical application. The region 

 in which service men for general forest disease work could be installed 

 with the most immediate return on the investment is the Douglas fir 

 area in the Pacific Northwest. The scientific knowledge of decay 

 in living Douglas fir timber has progressed far enough to serve as a 

 basis for improvement in the processes of estimating and utilizing 

 infected stands. With proper demonstration it should be possible 

 to get into very general use methods of cruising that would greatly 

 decrease the uncertainty element that decay introduces into lumber- 

 ing operations, and methods of marking trees for felling and bucking 

 that would decrease both the waste in money and waste in timber 

 that occur in the utilization of infected stands. 



In the Northeast where proximity to markets favors the utiliza- 

 tion of small or defective material, much could be done by service 

 men to stimulate the reduction of disease through the elimination 

 in weeding, thinning, or logging operations of infectious material or of 

 trees that would be liable to heavy infection before they could be 

 utilized in the next cut. Thinning operations, particularly on farm 

 'woodlots where the work could be done by the owner during slack 

 seasons so as to minimize the labor cost, could be made in many 

 cases to earn their way immediately through use or sale of the ma- 

 terial taken out; the improved growth and soundness of the trees 

 remaining could thus be obtained without cost. Such sanitation 

 incident to logging operations can also be accomplished at low cost, 

 or at no cost at all in many cases where it simply involves a difference 

 in choice of trees for cutting or where the defective material taken 

 out can be utilized. For the small timberland owner whose woods 

 holdings and operations are mainly incidental to general farming or 

 other activities, service of this sort is particularly necessary if he is 

 to avail himself of what is known about diseases ; with the numerous 

 tree species and diseases occurring in mixture in the timber of the 

 Eastern States, a man must be something of a specialist in order to 

 know how a particular piece of timber can best be handled for its 

 future health as well as for immediate profit. The development 

 of local market outlets for the material removed in sanitation cuttings 

 is another form of aid by which the service man can facilitate the 

 practice of disease control in woodlots. 



In the field of fungous deterioration of forest products there is 

 immediate opportunity for service activity to promote the intelligent 

 adoption by the small sawmill operators of the eastern United States 

 of the newly developed dipping treatments for preventing sap stain 

 of lumber. One of these treatments has already been put into 

 wide-spread use by the larger mills of the South, and should come into 

 general use among them with only the servicing that can be done by 

 the research men, the officers of the large-mill associations, and the 

 manufacturers of the chemicals employed; but the full development 

 of the use of the treatments by the small operators, who are the ones 



