6 Richard H. Boerker 
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. 
