ILLUSTRATIONS
| PAGE | |
| A Forest Ranger Looking for Fire From a National Forest Lookout Station | [Frontispiece] |
| Stringing a Forest Telephone Line | [32] |
| Forest Rangers Scaling Timber | [43] |
| Western Yellow Pine Seed Collected by the Forest Service for Planting up Denuded Lands | [47] |
| A Forest Examiner Running a Compass Line | [59] |
| Brush Piling in a National Forest Timber Sale | [95] |
| Forest Rangers Getting Instruction in Methods Of Work from a District Forest Officer | [105] |
| Forest Service Men Making Fresh Measurements in the Missouri Swamps | [136] |
THE TRAINING OF A FORESTER
WHAT IS A FOREST?
First, What is forestry? Forestry is the knowledge of the forest. In particular, it is the art of handling the forest so that it will render whatever service is required of it without being impoverished or destroyed. For example, a forest may be handled so as to produce saw logs, telegraph poles, barrel hoops, firewood, tan bark, or turpentine. The main purpose of its treatment may be to prevent the washing of soil, to regulate the flow of streams, to support cattle or sheep, or it may be handled so as to supply a wide range and combination of uses. Forestry is the art of producing from the forest whatever it can yield for the service of man.
Before we can understand forestry, certain facts about the forest itself must be kept in mind. A forest is not a mere collection of individual trees, just as a city is not a mere collection of unrelated men and women, or a Nation like ours merely a certain number of independent racial groups. A forest, like a city, is a complex community with a life of its own. It has a soil and an atmosphere of its own, chemically and physically different from any other, with plants and shrubs as well as trees which are peculiar to it. It has a resident population of insects and higher animals entirely distinct from that outside. Most important of all, from the Forester's point of view, the members of the forest live in an exact and intricate system of competition and mutual assistance, of help or harm, which extends to all the inhabitants of this complicated city of trees.