Forest Physiography

Excerpt from Forest Physiography: Physiography of the United States, and Principles of Soils in Relation to Forestry Students of forestry in the United States are constantly demanding a guide to the topography, drainage, soils, and climatic features of the country. The need for such a book is keenly felt, since students in the professional schools of forestry have little time for the study of origins 1 sources of material in a subject which is not forestry but the basis of forestry. On the other hand, such general sources as are available are both too brief and too elementary for the somewhat comprehensive requirements of the American forester. In preparing this book I have attempted to steer a middle course between that purely descriptive writing with which the forester is too often satisfied, and that altogether explanatory writing which the technical physiographer is inclined to regard as the real substance of a scientific book. The descriptive portions are intentionally rather comprehensive, for the relief and not the explanation of it is of immediate value to the forester, no matter how important the explanation may be in assisting him to appreciate and remember the relief. A chief concern has been the reduction of geologic data to a minimum. A geologic statement frequently runs off into so many consequences that the most important of these almost force one to a more extended and complex discussion than the forester, a lay student of geologic and geographic science, can assimilate. Emphatically, some geologic data are essential, but only in so far as they have an immediate physiographic bearing. A further point concerning the organization of the material of this book requires statement here. It seems so clear that one can not know forestry without knowing under what physical conditions trees grow, that one finds it impossible to see how even the least philosophical view of the subject can exclude a knowledge of physiography. It would seem that one should pay a great deal of attention to lumbering as related to drainage and relief, to silviculture as related to soils, climate, and water supply, and in general that one should emphasize the forester's dependence upon physical conditions. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.