AN AUSTRALIAN STUDY OF AMERICAN FORESTRY. 91 
This initial period was a period of European ideals, when European 
systems were to be introduced bodily. Working plans were the last thing in 
European forestry; they would be the first thing in American. Sustained 
yield was the basic principle of European forestry; it must be the first plank 
in the American platform. European working plans were silvicultural in 
character, so also must be the American. 
Since such forest activities as grazing, improvements, fire protection, &c. 
were absent from European practice, and, therefore, from European working 
plans, they were overlooked entirely in the preparation of the American. 
But since such activities were necessarily the first care of the Forest 
Service in its work-a-day business, effective systems of management of them 
were developed without realising that those systems were really chapters of a 
truly American working plan. 
Meanwhile came a reaction against “academic” working plans as super- 
fluous, and from 1905 to 1911, the Forest Service turned its whole-hearted 
attention to problems of actual protection and administration, working out 
step by step the details of departmental policy and practice, correcting 
mistakes, adjusting difficulties, aiming at absolute efficiency in all respects. 
Forest survey and assessment constituted a prime need of management, 
and the Forest Service pressed on feverishly with this work, aiming at the 
satisfaction of an urgent demand for quick results, for the assessment of a 
maximum area at a minimum cost. Assessors were hurried from one area to 
another without time to complete their reports. 
The elaborately designed working plan recomnaissance become nothing 
more than a survey and assessment for purposes of timber sales and classifi- 
cation. But maps and estimates of considerable value were produced in the 
process. Scattered forest descriptions and silvical data accumulated in 
reports and on files, suggestions developed with regard to silvicultural systems. 
Marking rules for different forest types were recommended in. timber sale 
reports. 
All this information lay unused, but when it became essential to record 
it in accessible form, systematisation ensued. 
Time had brought a considerable codification of thought.: 
The “National Forest Manual” laid down that “the object of working 
plans was to systematise the management of each forest in accordance with the 
cumulative experience and information which the service had acquired.” 
The plans were to be subdivided into seven sections in order to provide 
flexibility in preparation and use— 
(1.) General forest description. 
(2.) Silviculture 
(3.) Grazing. 
(4.) Lands. 
(5.) Protection. 
(6.) Improvements. 
(7.) Administration. 
The Forest Service had come to a realisation that there were other 
activities in American forest management than the silvicultural aims mono- 
polising the European plan. : 
G 
