A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 1573 



Two general suggestions have been made for meeting the situation. 

 The Society of American Foresters report just cited recommends a 

 national privately endowed institution of forest research with a 

 governing board similar to that of one or another of the existing 

 scientific research institutions, with adequate representation of public, 

 scientific, and business interests. The single objective of this institu- 

 tion would be forest research as a fundamental aid to forestry. 

 Since forest research requires, in general, an entirely different techni- 

 que and background from that of other research, such an institution 

 could undoubtedly be best developed as a distinct organization. 

 Absorption into another institution with many lines of work under 

 way might retard or prevent the fulfillment of its central objective. 



The institution should, however, be prepared to subsidize carefully 

 selected projects at other institutions, and to furnish facilities for 

 special work to representatives of such institutions. 



Field stations, experimental forests, and laboratories would be 

 required. In locating these the highest feasible concentration 

 among the different lines of forest research should be observed. 

 This alone will insure the desired contact between scientists investi- 

 gating related problems, and make possible a thoroughly coordinated 

 and effective attack upon all the fundamental phases of forest life 

 and environment. This maximum concentration might involve 

 maintaining two or three main field laboratories in the United States 

 and others in Canada and the Tropics. Arrangements should be 

 highly flexible, permitting the investigators to work temporarily at 

 any advantageous point, either independently or in cooperation with 

 other research institutions. 



The second suggestion was made in a recent report 2 to the Com- 

 mittee on Forestry Research, National Academy of Sciences. This 

 report points to the fact that the basic experimental aspects of plant 

 science have not yet been brought to the point at which they can be 

 applied in silviculture, and that "A new science of forest physiology, 

 involving both physiology of the tree and of the forest, must be 

 developed. * * * The physiological approach * * offers 

 a rational means of advance to other basic aspects of silvicultural 

 problems" extending over an extremely wide field and contributing 

 materially "to the solution of the more complex problems of forest 

 production." 



As possible agencies for this work the report discusses all organi- 

 zations now engaged in forest research. It gives paramount impor- 

 tance to a clearly visualized and assured long-term forest-research 

 policy, which it is difficult to safeguard in universities. No single 

 university, according to this proposal, should have to assume entire 

 responsibility, nor should an undertaking like this be farmed out in 

 disjointed fragments to existing university departments. 



The report to the National Academy of Science contends that in 

 the long run 



the interests both of forestry and of educational institutions can be served best 

 if the task of initiating, developing, and guiding researches in the more basic 

 experimental aspects of forest production is assumed by some special adminis- 

 trative agency 



which should be "free to accept funds from various sources for con- 

 sistent and carefully planned projects". The institution thus en- 



2 Bailey, I. W., and Spoehr, H. A. The Role of Research in the Development of Forestry in North 

 America. P. 118. The MacMillan Co., New York. 1929. 



