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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLI. No. 1047 



and meclianical properties of the wood ; on 

 the geologist and soil physicist for the 

 knowledge of sites suitable for the growth 

 of different kinds of trees; upon the plant 

 pathologist for the diseases of trees; upon 

 the entomologist for the insect enemies of 

 the forest, and so on. 



Such an impression is undoubtedly 

 strengthened when the activities of such 

 an organization as the Forest Service are 

 considered. The placing under manage- 

 ment of about 200 million acres of forest 

 land has been an administrative problem 

 of enormous magnitude. The administra- 

 tion of this vast public property involves 

 many large industrial and economic ques- 

 tions, and affects intimately a number of 

 varied and important interests: the lum- 

 ber industry, the grazing industry, water 

 power development, navigation, municipal 

 water supplies, agricultural settlement, 

 mining development and the railroads. 

 In launching this first great public enter- 

 prise, undertaken in the face of very 

 strong opposition, administrative activities 

 appeared to overshadow research work. 

 In this way doubtless many scientific men 

 have gained the impression that forestry 

 has little to do with science, which seeks 

 for the causal relationship of things and 

 for the establishment of laws and prin- 

 ciples, that forestry is rather a patch work 

 of miscellaneous knowledge borrowed from 

 other sciences and assembled without par- 

 ticular system to help the practical admin- 

 istrator of forest property. 



My endeavor in this paper will be to 

 show that this impression is erroneous. 

 While it is true that forestry as an art, as 

 an applied science, utilizes results fur- 

 nished by the natural and engineering 

 sciences, while it is also true that the for- 

 ester's activities — particularly during the 

 pioneer period of establishing forest prac- 

 tise — ^may be largely administrative in 



character, there is nevertheless a funda- 

 mental forest science which has a distinc- 

 tive place. As with all others the science 

 of forestry owes its distinctive character to 

 its correlation from a certain point of view 

 of parts of certain other sciences, such as 

 mathematics, botany, entomology, civil 

 engineering and chemistry. But these are 

 only auxiliary to the resultant science — 

 forestry — which rests upon a knowledge of 

 the life of the forest as such, and which 

 therefore depends upon the discovery of 

 laws governing the forest's growth and de- 

 velopment. 



It is in this field chiefly that foresters 

 may claim some scientific achievement, 

 some contribution to general science. Sci- 

 ences do not develop out of curiosity; they 

 appear first of all because there are prac- 

 tical problems that need to be solved, and 

 only later become an aim in themselves. 

 This has been equally true of the science 

 of forestry. The object of forestry as an 

 art is to produce timber of high technical 

 quality. In pursuing this object, the for- 

 ester very early observed that tall, cylin- 

 drical timber, comparatively free of knots, 

 is produced only in dense stands, in forests 

 in which the trees exert an influence upon 

 each other as well as upon the soil and 

 climate of the area occupied by them. He 

 further discovered that the social environ- 

 ment produced by trees in a forest is an 

 absolutely essential condition for the con- 

 tinuous natural existence of the forest 

 itself. If the forester had not found forests 

 in nature, he would have had to create 

 forests artificially in order to accomplish 

 his practical purpose, since it is only 

 through the control and regulation of the 

 natural struggle for existence between trees 

 in the forest that the forester is capable of 

 managing it for the practical needs of man. 

 Thus from the very nature of his dealings 

 with the forest the forester was forced from 



