ON GROWING TREES 
FOR LUMBER 
IpEAS ON ProriTaBLeE RE-FORESTRATION 
GOOD many years ago I had a talk with an 
A official connected with the Department of 
Forestry, at Washington, in which I sug- 
gested that the problems of his department could 
best be met by the development of new types of 
forest trees. 
The official regarded the suggestion as 
grotesque. In common with nearly everyone else 
at that time he looked upon the tree as a fixed 
product of nature, quite beyond the possibilities of 
any change that man could direct. 
That was the time when Darwinism, although 
it had pretty fully established itself in the scien- 
tific world, was still on trial in the minds of the 
people in general. And even those who accepted 
the general truth of the Darwinian doctrine of. 
evolution for the most part did not realize that 
evolution is a process that is going on about us 
[VotumE XI—Cwapter VI] 
