1572 A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 



The agencies thus far discussed are conducting research as a part 

 of other forestry activities. A different situation is presented by the 

 endowed scientific institutions referred to in the section " Privately 

 Supported and Quasi-Public Forest Research.' 7 These are engaged in 

 research exclusively; but with one or two exceptions their research 

 bears only incidentally upon forestry. 



The institutions with organized botanical or economic departments 

 could give greatly increased service to forestry within these fields. 

 To furnish substantial aid to forestry, however, the research approach 

 should be from the distinctive forestry point of view. Silviculture 

 in America is seriously handicapped by the dearth of knowledge 

 in the domain of tree physiology, genetics, and related sciences. 

 In the field of physiology the functioning of trees, their reactions 

 to environment, the characteristics that underlie susceptibility and 

 resistance to climatic and other factors, are only a few of many 

 subjects that have fundamental importance for silviculture and that 

 as yet remain practically unexplored. Very little has yet been done to 

 determine the possibilities of improving strains by cross-breeding and 

 selection, and the same is true of many other lines of investigation 

 that hold great promise for the future. The scientific institutions 

 and arboreta are appropriate agencies for conducting fundamental 

 research on these subjects. 



Although more active participation on the part of existing scientific 

 institutions is greatly to be desired, the breadth of their research 

 fields prevents the necessary concentration of effort upon the specific 

 field of forestry. Forest research has two features that probably 

 distinguish it from any other field of scientific endeavor and that make 

 necessary a special mode of attack : The complexity of the problems, 

 and the long time required for results. Between different classes 

 of factors highly important relationships exist which compel a system- 

 atic and organized group attack from many angles. Failure to 

 coordinate research efforts results in confusion, duplication, and delay. 

 European experience, cited in a report of the Society of American 

 Foresters, 1 reveals the inadequacy of uncoordinated or desultory 

 forest research: 



One of the serious handicaps of all except possibly the most recent funda- 

 mental forest research of Europe is its scattered and fragmentary character. 

 One investigator examines a single narrow phase of tree growth or requirements. 

 It may be the change in stored food substances in the tree upon the approach of 

 winter for a single species, light intensity and photosynthesis in one or two 

 species, the use by a single species in one locality of diffused light, nitrogen fixa- 

 tion by a very limited number of bacterial organisms, or some local phase of soil 

 acidity. Each investigator works independently of all others. Exceedingly 

 valuable information results, but fragmentary, full of gaps, and difficult or im- 

 possible of correlation. It furnishes, for example, in the aggregate, a part of the 

 soil requirements of one species in one locality, a part of environmental light 

 relationships of another species somewhere else, an isolated phase of the physio- 

 logical activities of a third species. 



Neither the scientific institutions with their broad research com- 

 mitments, nor the forest schools with their educational obligations, 

 nor public forestry agencies burdened not only with administrative 

 responsibilities but also with the imperative demand for workable 

 solutions of emergency problems, can fully supply the need for a 

 systematic and sustained program of fundamental research. 



1 A National Program of Forest Research. Report of a special committee on forest research of the Wash- 

 ington Section, Society of American Foresters. Pp. 232. American Tree Association. Washington, D.C. 

 1926. 



