6 Richard H. Bocrker 



we keep on getting results in the next twenty-five years in the 

 same proportion as we have done in the past ten, will many of our 

 important problems be solved? Most silvicultural investigative 

 problems take many years to solve. Some nursery and planting 

 problems can be solved in from three to five years (if nothing 

 interferes), but most of even these take longer. In many cases it 

 takes from two to four years merely to raise stock let alone 

 experiment with it. It usually takes six months or more to de- 

 termine whether the stock set out will live, let alone establish 

 principles in planting. The element of time is the largest factor 

 in this work ; we will need much of it, for failures will be numer- 

 ous and this will mean the loss of many years. Only long time 

 and carefully planned investigations can lead to stable and eco- 

 nomic forest management. 



With the development of forestry it cannot be doubted that a 

 great deal of exact silvical and silvicultural knowledge is neces- 

 sary, and we must admit that a great deal of data is needed to-day 

 which cannot be furnished. We have unsystematic and indefinite 

 knowledge about many phenomena which await experimental 

 proof. In fact, forestry is loaded down with a vast weight of 

 undigested facts, and pure science has only begun to relieve 

 forestry of this burden. The quickest and surest way for purely 

 forestry research to gain recognition is to show how to attain 

 practical results which years of blind groping along applied lines 

 have failed to accomplish. 



Our task is a gigantic one, greater than any investigative prob- 

 lems that have confronted or will confront European nations. 

 We have more species of trees important in forestry than all 

 European nations combined. Our varied topographic and cli- 

 matic conditions make our problems infinitely more complex and 

 numerous. But that should not discourage us. Big problems 

 concerning the forest have been solved in the past and are being 

 attacked to-day. We have worked out our problems in logging 

 and have developed machinery and methods unique in the history 

 of forest industry ; we have developed a system of forest fire 

 protection unlike anything ever attempted by forestry-practicing 

 nations ; it remains for American ingenuity and enterprise to solve 

 the silvicultural problems which confront the American forester. 



