AN AUSTRALIAN STUDY OF AMERICAN FORESTRY. 103 
an opportunity for assembling and discussing the year’s records and results, 
and of recommending plans of management for the ensuing period. It is really 
a preliminary working plan adapted to the quickly-moving conditions of the 
pioneering period. 
As silvical data increase and influence the system of management, the 
annual plan will evolve into the true working plan known to Europe. In the 
meantime, the “regional silvicultural plan” so-called, represents the separa- 
tion from the mass, of the idea of silviculture as the ‘central fact of manage- 
ment. It emerges as a compilation of silvical data, upon which the true 
working plan must be founded. 
Such has been the evolution of the American working plan. What should 
have come first has come at long last. 
Organisation and working plans started off at opposite poles in the 
beginning of American forest administration. Time has elaborated the former, 
and simplified the latter, until both are now practically coincident and co- 
ordinate. 
The lesson for Australia is that development must be founded on the rock 
bottom of established conditions. 
The vehicles are policy, organisation, silvical research, and annual 
working plans. Through them the final working plan will be attained. 
Policy is the foundation, and it will be furnished, in all good time perhaps, 
by State legislative enactments. Those enactments should vest in the State 
Forest Services (a) an adequate forest estate; (6) full technical control; (c) 
authority to reinvest the forest revenue in the forest. Short Acts are quite 
sufficient ; they should afford the widest possible powers of management to the 
forest administration, and provide ready means for keeping pace with the 
rapidly changing phases of extension which must ensue. 
The basis of organisation is reconnaissance and division of the area. There 
must be a wide and vigorous development of forest assessment and survey 
work, so as to provide necessary maps and figures for management, and in 
order to indicate the location of exploitable timber belts. The distribution of 
age classes must be ascertained so that those belts may be dealt with in 
order of their maturity as far as possible. A stocktaking of little-used species 
is requisite in order to determine their possibilities and extend utilisation to 
them, thus removing a very serious handicap to effective forest practice. 
Silvical investigations must be carried out. There must be a study of the 
chief forest types and their growth and reproduction. Increment data must 
be secured. An investigation of markets and industries, including studies of 
methods and costs of utilisation, transportation facilities and local needs js of 
prime importance, since such considerations must govern the royalty and 
timber sales policy. 
A standard outline for silvicultural studies should be drawn up, and all 
information which has been collected should be assembled systematically in it. 
There must be a preliminary division of the area into convenier.t units of 
management and operation. A resident forest personnel must be appointed. 
Forest stations and nurseries must be established, also forest experiment 
stations. 
In the annual plan, the managing officer should record the year's opera- 
tions for the forest, reduction of timber estimates by cutting, fire, &c., the 
results and information obtained and the work projected for the ensuing 
twelve months. 
