Part 1 (1/2)
The Training of a Forester.
by Gifford Pinchot.
PREFACE
At one time or another, the largest question before every young man is, ”What shall I do with my life?” Among the possible openings, which best suits his ambition, his tastes, and his capacities? Along what line shall he undertake to make a successful career? The search for a life work and the choice of one is surely as important business as can occupy a boy verging into manhood. It is to help in the decision of those who are considering forestry as a profession that this little book has been written.
To the young man who is attracted to forestry and begins to consider it as a possible profession, certain questions present themselves. What is forestry? If he takes it up, what will his work be, and where? Does it in fact offer the satisfying type of outdoor life which it appears to offer? What chance does it present for a successful career, for a career of genuine usefulness, and what is the chance to make a living? Is he fitted for it in character, mind, and body? If so, what training does he need? These questions deserve an answer.
To the men whom it really suits, forestry offers a career more attractive, it may be said in all fairness, than any other career whatsoever. I doubt if any other profession can show a members.h.i.+p so uniformly and enthusiastically in love with the work. The men who have taken it up, practised it, and left it for other work are few. But to the man not fully adapted for it, forestry must be punishment, pure and simple. Those who have begun the study of forestry, and then have learned that it was not for them, have doubtless been more in number than those who have followed it through.
I urge no man to make forestry his profession, but rather to keep away from it if he can. In forestry a man is either altogether at home or very much out of place. Unless he has a compelling love for the Forester's life and the Forester's work, let him keep out of it.
G. P.
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 was.h.i.+ng 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 compet.i.tion and mutual a.s.sistance, of help or harm, which extends to all the inhabitants of this complicated city of trees.
The trees in a forest are all helped by mutually protecting each other against high winds, and by producing a richer and moister soil than would be possible if the trees stood singly and apart. They compete among themselves by their roots for moisture in the soil, and for light and s.p.a.ce by the growth of their crowns in height and breadth. Perhaps the strongest weapon which trees have against each other is growth in height. In certain species intolerant of shade, the tree which is overtopped has lost the race for good. The number of young trees which destroy each other in this fierce struggle for existence is prodigious, so that often a few score per acre are all that survive to middle or old age out of many tens of thousands of seedlings which entered the race of life on approximately even terms.
Not only has a forest a character of its own, which arises from the fact that it is a community of trees, but each species of tree has peculiar characteristics and habits also. Just as in New York City, for example, the French, the Germans, the Italians, the Hungarians, and the Chinese each have quarters of their own, and in those quarters live in accordance with habits which distinguish each race from all the others, so the different species of pines and hemlocks, oaks and maples prefer and are found in certain definite types of locality, and live in accordance with definite racial habits which are as general and unfailing as the racial characteristics which distinguish, for example, the Italians from the Germans, or the Swedes from the Chinese.
The most important of these characteristics of race or species are those which are concerned with the relation of each to light, heat, and moisture. Thus, a river birch will die if it has only as much water as will suffice to keep a post oak in the best condition, and the warm climate in which the balsam fir would perish is just suited to the requirements of a long leaf pine or a magnolia.
The tolerance of a tree for shade may vary greatly at different times of its life, but a white pine always requires more light than a hemlock, and a beech throughout its life will flourish with less suns.h.i.+ne or reflected light than, for example, an oak or a tulip tree.
Trees are limited in their distribution also by their adaptability, in which they vary greatly. Thus a bald cypress will grow both in wetter and in dryer land than an oak; a red cedar will flourish from Florida to the Canadian line, while other species, like the Eastern larch, the Western mountain hemlock, or the big trees of California, are confined in their native localities within extremely narrow limits.
THE FORESTER'S KNOWLEDGE