UTAH ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 189 
is also true that the forester’s activities, especially during 
the pioneer period of establishing forestry practice, may be 
largely administrative in character, there is nevertheless 
a fundamental forestry science which has a _ distinctive 
place among the other natural sciences. The science of 
forestry gains its distinction partially through its correla- 
tion of parts of many of the other sciences, such as botany, 
physics, chemistry, mathematics, engineering, entomology, 
zoology, and geology, but more specially through the re- 
sultant science—forestry—which depends upon an intimate 
knowledge of the life of the forest as such and the discovery 
of the natural laws governing its growth and development. 
In forestry, as a natural science, we deal with the 
forest as a community in which the individual trees in- 
fluence each other and also influence the community as 
an organic entity. The life history of the forest varies 
with the individual species entering into its composition, 
the density of the stand, the manner in which the trees of 
different ages are grouped, the climatic and soil factors 
which influence the vigor, growth and development of the 
individual trees. By abuse the forest may be greatly in- 
jured and as a living biological community, it may even be 
completely destroyed. The forest responds promptly to 
care, protection, and improved methods of treatment and 
by skillful management it may be made to produce a very 
high quality of products in greater amounts and in a 
shorter time than if nature were left to take her own 
course. 
In forestry, as in other pursuits, the practice depends 
upon the science and logically should follow rather than pre- 
cede. Scientific work in forestry can only develop grad- 
ually since the life of a single individual tree may extend 
over an average of six or seven generations of man. 
Forest research in its development in every country 
must pass through a series of evolutionary stages, which, 
although not always sharply defined, may be grouped as 
follows: 
1. The observational stage; when very little is known 
of the forest. The observations are generally made in con- 
