Forestry in the United States 



A significant meeting was the coming together in Washington, 

 D. C, of the destructive and constructive interests the lumber- 

 men and the foresters in friendly council, each recognising the 

 claims of the other, and their interdependence and need of co- 

 operation. The American Forest Congress, of January, 1905, 

 was an epoch-making event. 



The Bureau of Forestry is the efficient head of all our forest 

 interests. It has places to put all students who are well trained 

 for the profession of forestry. A large body of strong young men 

 are entering it. The outlook is extremely encouraging. 



The public mind is vague when it encounters the nomenclature 

 of a new science. Forestry, its subdivisions and synonyms, 

 and its relation to other sciences, may be briefly set forth. 



Forestry is one grand division of the great art of Agriculture, 

 "the cultivation of the field." Silviculture and forestry are used 

 as synonyms. Arboriculture includes beside forest trees those 

 that are grown for their fruit, and for ornament. Hence it 

 includes a large part of horticulture and landscape gardening 

 the growing of trees for any purpose. Silviculture is, properly 

 speaking, that branch of forestry which deals with the scientific 

 production of a crop of trees. Forest regulation is the business 

 branch, which manages the annual outlay and returns of the 

 forest. It has the lumbering and marketing of the crop in charge. 

 Dendrology is one of the fundamental sciences upon which forestry 

 rests. It is the botany of trees, and has three distinct branches of 

 equal importance to the forester: (i) Tree physiology and 

 pathology, life processes of trees in health and disease; (2) tree 

 anatomy and histology, the structure, gross and minute, of trees; 

 (3) systematic botany, a study of the kinds of trees in order to 

 know them by name. 



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