186 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 
VALUE OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH IN FORESTRY.’ 
By C. F. KORSTIAN. 
In Charge of Research, Intermountain District, U. S. Forest 
Service, Ogden, Utah. 
Scientific research may be defined as the experimental 
observational method of diligently searching after natural 
facts and principles instead of relying on the answers 
secured by imagination or through deductive reasoning 
from assumed premises. In other words research implies 
the application of the senses and reasoning powers with 
which nature has endowed man, in finding out all he can 
concerning the vast world and universe about him. Man 
never can be perfectly sure that he has found out all about 
them until he is able to control them, which, you will say, 
is physically impossible. The principle of research, as the 
only foundation of all knowledge, has hardly yet thorough- 
ly penetrated the thick walls of academic dogmatism and 
a false conceit of knowledge. Research means progress 
which denotes the replacing of the old by the new. 
It seems superfluous to speak of the value of research 
in general before so academic an audience. Consequently 
your attention will be directed primarly to the value of 
research in forestry and incidentally to some of our pro- 
blems in forest research. Forestry is defined as the science 
and art of managing forests in continuity for forest pur- 
poses, i. e., for wood products and forest influences. 
The economic and industrial development of the United 
States is of comparatively recent date. The abundance 
of many of the natural resources of the country have here- 
tofore made the consideration of their exhaustion a subject 
of little public interest. The increasing rapidity with which 
the natural resources of the nation have approached a 
state of depletion in the more populous and better indus- 
trially developed parts of the United States has recently 
emphasized the need of the utmost foresight in their con- 
servation. In recognition of this need the Federal Govern- 
1Read before the Utah Academy of Sciences, April 6, 1917. Published 
by permission of the Secretary of Agriculture. 
