[Illustration: Figure 28. A planting crew at work setting out small trees. The man ahead digs the hole, and the man behind plants the tree. Wasatch National Forest, Utah]
THE ORGANIZATION AND SCOPE OF FOREST EXPERIMENTS AND INVESTIGATIONS
_The Need of Scientific Experiments._ No science can make progress without intensive experiments and investigations, least of all a new science like forestry. The science of forestry as it has developed in Europe is several hundred years old, but the science of forestry as applied to American conditions is still in the infancy of its development--probably not over 20 years old. Therefore we know very little about our trees, our forests, and the wood which they produce, and the professional foresters who handle the scientific work on our National Forests are very much handicapped. To supply the needed information about the requirements of many of our tree species, the uses to which their wood can be put, and many other related subjects, the Forest Service has established 8 Forest Experiment Stations (recently reduced to 6) and one Forest Products Laboratory. It has become the business of these institutions to study the laws governing the life of the tree and the forest and their effect upon the final product--wood. The Experiment Stations are working on the solution of the many problems which confront the Forest officers in the management and the protection of the National Forests; while the Forest Products Laboratory was organized to promote the most profitable utilization and the most economical disposition of the forest products of the National Forests. Both sets of institutions, in doing this, are helping materially to build up the science of American Forestry, which even to-day can hardly be said to exist.
_The Science of Growing Timber._ In order to better understand the many diversified problems which are being studied at the Forest Experiment Stations, it is necessary to give the reader a few ideas concerning the science of forest ecology. This science is the basis of all problems dealing with the growing of timber and is therefore a study of the utmost importance to forestry. Forest ecology is the study of the relations of trees and forests to their surroundings. By surroundings (or environment) we mean all the factors which influence their growth and reproduction, such as soil temperature, soil moisture, soil texture, rainfall, light, wind, air temperature, relative humidity, altitude, slope, exposure, and surface. Forests, we must remember, are not warehouses of standing logs; they are not merely aggregations of individual trees; but they are complex communities of living organisms, which are affected in many ways by climate and soil and which, in turn, affect in no small degree the climatic and soil conditions in their immediate vicinity. The forester cannot treat the forest as an aggregation of individuals, for forests have laws which govern their behavior which are entirely different from those that govern the individual tree. Some foresters and botanists prefer to call this science by the name of "tree sociology," and they compare it with human sociology. Individuals, as we well know, are governed by different natural laws than communities. Just so with trees and forests. In order, therefore, to grow a never-failing supply of timber intelligently and economically we must understand these complex organisms and communities, we must study their behavior under different soil and climatic conditions and ascertain the conditions under which they grow best. Only by doing this can the forester achieve all the objects of forestry, namely, to help Nature to produce more and better timber, in a shorter length of time and at the smallest possible cost.