AN AUSTRALIAN STUDY OF AMERICAN FORESTRY. 197 
Forest supervisors, again, are required to bring under notice matters 
affecting the broad administration of their forests, such as “the presence of 
large quanties of unmarketable species, of dead timber, or of material not 
used in current sales, local manufacturing and marketing problems, market 
prejudices, etc.; and experts in forest products are attached to each District 
Office to deal with these matters and investigate the general utilisation and 
market problems of the district. 
The Office of Industrial Investigations also conducts statistical and 
industrial inquiries as to wood uses and manufacture. 
In other specialising branches of administration, similar general investiga- 
tions are being carried out. 
Such investigations, however, were largely of a transitory nature, bounded 
by the beginning and end of field seasons, and subordinated to the adminis- 
trative activities upon which officers were really engaged. Something more 
was required if well-ordered and substantial progress was to be made. In 
addition to general investigation, the need for intensive research on a 
permanent basis was realised. 
Intensive studies were classed under the four heads of Dendrology, 
Grazing, Silviculture, and Products. 
An Office of Dendrology was constituted at Washington to carry on the 
dendrological studies of the Forest Service, and field officers were required to 
co-operate with it by collecting specimens. 
An Office of Grazing Studies also was established, with experiment stations 
of its own on several of the national forests. 
The strictly technical research on forest products was centralised at the 
well-equipped Madison Forest Laboratory attached to the University of 
Wisconsin. 
Intensive study with regard to silvicultural problems was allotted to 
forest experiment stations, similar to those of Germany and India, three of 
which were established in the central and southern Rockies, one in the Sierras, 
one in North-Western Idaho, and one at the University of Minnesota. 
Finally, with the accumulation of data on every hand, and the extension 
of investigative activities throughout the Forest Service, the necessity of 
co-ordination was felt, and the organisation of the forest research work was 
completed by the appointment of investigative committees in each district 
with a controlling central investigative committee at Washington. The 
duty of the district committees was to prepare an annual programme of forest 
studies for the respective districts. These programmes were to be submitted 
to the central committee, whose function was to correlate, plan, and direct 
the entire research work of the Forest Service, and publish the results periodic- 
ally in a review of investigations. 
Forest studies are just as essential to the development of Australian 
forestry as they were to the building up of the American science. But our 
investigative resources are more limited. We have not organisations highly 
specialised like that of the United States of America Forest Service, nor have 
we even a staff of scientists or experts in the various branches of forestry. 
Tt is true that something. can be done in a general way by the present super- 
visional and assessment staff in the shape of accumulating extensive data, but 
much more is necessary. Certainly, Mr. R. T. Baker, at the Technological 
Museum, and Professor Warren, at the Engineering School of Sydney Univer- 
sity, and others, have contributed greatly to our knowledge with regard to 
forest products, while Mr. J. H. Maiden, at the National Herbarium, has 
