methods, and efficiency. And 

 although southern universities 

 started later than their sister 

 institutions to the north and west, 

 today they are major and still 

 growing partners with Federal 

 agencies and industry in forestry 

 and forest-products research. 



During the Lumbering Period 



Before 1928, most forestry schools 

 in the Nation had only two- to 

 four-member faculties. Teaching 

 plus extension responsibilities 

 added up to heavy workloads. 

 There was little time for research. 

 Agricultural research was going 

 forward at the land-grant 

 universities under stimulus of the 

 Hatch Act of 1887, which provided 

 continuing Federal funds on a 

 matching basis through the State 

 agricultural experiment stations. 

 But not much forestry research 

 had resulted. The main 

 contribution during this early 

 period was from certain northern 

 universities that had established 

 school forests (Kaufert and 

 Cummings 1955). 



Situations at the three southern 

 universities with active teaching 

 programs were a reflection of the 

 national picture. In the 1934-35 

 school year, they had a combined 

 total of just 11 1/2 full-time faculty. 

 The Louisiana State University 

 report at this time to the Society of 

 American Foresters stated flatly, 

 "No research projects have so far 

 been attempted as full time is 



needed for teaching and camp 

 instruction'" (Chapman 1935). 



But there were important 

 exceptions. For example, before 

 the Biltmore Forest School closed 

 in 1913, Carl Schenck carried out 

 the first large-scale plantings in the 

 United States. These included a 

 number of the most valuable 

 hardwood species (which were 

 complete failures for the most part) 

 plus white pine and shortleaf pine, 

 which were spectacularly 

 successful even on severely eroded 

 old fields. Schenck also carried out 

 improvement and release cuttings 

 and yellow-poplar regeneration 

 cuttings. He kept cost and return 

 records and set up permanent 

 photographic stations for visual 

 recordation (Schenck 1974). This 

 on-the-ground evidence of what 

 would and what wouldn't work 

 was invaluable to the development 

 of forestry in the southern 

 Appalachians. 



At Auburn Polytechnic Institute 

 (now Auburn University), the 

 Alabama Agricultural Experiment 

 Station allocated $80 in 1926 to 

 Professor H. M. Ware, head of the 

 horticulture department, to 

 produce pine seedlings for species 

 trials. The following year he began 

 making test demonstration 

 plantings on 80 acres (32 ha) of the 

 main campus, which were to 

 become famous as the "Auburn 

 Plantations." They included four 

 different species planted to spacing 

 ranging from 3 ft apart to 18 ft 

 apart (1 to 2.8 m). Studies were 



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