Textbook of Dendrology. William M. Harlow and Ellwood S. Harrar. 560 pp. Illus. 4th edition. McGraw. Hill Book Company. New York and London. $7.00, £3. 8s.
This book, one of the American Forestry Series, is designed for beginner students of forestry, describing the important forest trees of the United States and Canada. Like its predecessors, the fourth edition emphasizes the taxonomic features of families, genera and species, and gives the silvicultural characteristics and geographical distribution of the major species. Nomenclature, classification and references to the literature have been brought up to date. The authors have felt that students of forestry should first know well the commercial species of North America and then become familiar with the less important trees and shrubs of the locality where they may find themselves practicing forestry. The latter must usually be done by the student himself with the aid of a local tree manual.
It is to be hoped that, at some stage and through some agency, a similar concise textbook will become available about important Central and South American species.
Lumber. Nelson Courtlandt Brown and James Samuel Bethel. 380 pp. Illus. 2nd edition. John Wiley (New York) Chapman and Hall Ltd. (London) 1958. $9.00.
The first edition of this publication appeared in 1947. Since then, many technical advances have been made by the lumber industry, making necessary a revision of the original text. Increased labor costs, a steadily decreasing quality of raw material, and competition from other materials for markets, are cited as reasons for changes in methods and procedures.
Increased attention is given in this second edition to the subject of mill layout and handling of materials. The chapter on small sawmills has been eliminated and the pertinent material transferred elsewhere, reflecting the trend in the south and east of the United States away from portable mills toward small permanent installations, and the trend in the West to combine small sawmills with large.
The preface says that perhaps the most significant addition is a new chapter on quality control. The application of statistical quality control methods to lumber manufacture is a significant new development in all major manufacturing areas. Because this technique is new to the wood product field, more detail of the basic statistical concepts and control chart methodology has been included than might otherwise have been introduced into a textbook on lumber.
The chapter on lumber drying has been expanded to cover new developments in kiln and air drying. A new chapter has been added on advances in the use of wood residues and the production of allied products by lumber manufacturing enterprises.
This edition will maintain the reputation of Lumber as an excellent textbook for professional forestry schools and as a reference volume for the whole lumber industry.
Forest Soils. S.A. Wilde. 538 pp. The Ronald Press, New York, 1958. $8.60.
Some understanding of forest soils began with the ancients and with various so-called primitive tribes and peoples to whom the understanding was essential as a means of survival. As the beginnings of what may be called science developed, attention to this broad subject of course continued.
A major impulse to the understanding of forest soils was provided by the breakdown of spruce in Saxony in the early part of this century, and various students were led to take a new look at some obviously ill-understood problems of forest soils and their productive use. The author of this latest American teaching text regards the German forester, Grebe, as having laid the cornerstone of modern soil science and ecology in 1840, and considers that Hilgard in 1906 laid the foundation of modern forest ecology.
As the bibliography of this excellent text indicates, a very large number of professional publications originating in many countries have singe appeared.
The present textbook is divided into two major parts, the first dealing with soil as a medium for tree growth, and the second with soil science and silviculture - that is respectively with the scientific foundations and the applications.
In the relation of forest vegetation to soils it is necessary to understand the general process of forest succession and to study various widely differing major areas of the world in which the soils and the forest vegetation present great contrasts. The areas covered in this book include Karelia, the Great Lakes region of the United States, the Dnieper Basin of southern Russia, the driftless area of Wisconsin in the United States, the Landes of France, and several others.
Modern methods of forest soil surveys, which have developed rapidly, are necessary for obtaining and using a knowledge of soils effectively. One of these uses is in deciding on areas on which reforestation may be successful, on methods of planting best suited to different soils and soil types, on the whole battery of methods available for dealing with unproductive soils, including drainage, fastening down blowing sands, dealing with spoil banks, burning, fertilization, etc. In this whole field of practical application, the means now available are far greater than in earlier times, and it is clearly important for the practitioner to have readily available all the solid information which has been accumulated.
Lexique Pédologique Trilingue. (TRILINGUAL LEXICON OF SOIL SCIENCE) G. Plaisance. Mimeographed. 367 pp. Centre de Documentation Universitaire. Paris. 1958. 1,500 fr.
The establishment of a multilingual terminology is especially difficult in the case of soil science, although this is one of the fields in which it would be particularly useful. The attempt made by FAO some time ago (Multilingual Vocabulary of Soil Science, 1954) restricted itself to a limited number of terms and definitions. Any attempt to make an improved international terminology was therefore to be welcomed.
This is what Mr G. Plaisance has successfully attempted in publishing his trilingual soil lexicon (French English German) which contains about 3,300 words. One innovation is worth noting as it offers a more solid basis on which the desired international co-ordinated terminology might be built. The annexes give in a clear and concise way the equivalents of the different terms relating to soil properties used by the various schools of soil science.
The Physiology of Forest Trees - A Symposium. Edited by K.V. Thimann. 678 pp. illus. The Ronald Press, New York, 1968. $12.00.
The Maria Moors Cabot Foundation performed a valuable service in making possible the holding of this symposium at the Harvard Forest in April 1967. The volume contains the papers and the results of the discussion by a number of outstanding research workers actively engaged in studying tree physiology or closely related fields. The participants came from Canada, the United Kingdom, Norway, Germany, New Zealand and various parts of the United States.
Many texts on plant physiology already exist. But this symposium dealt with tree physiology, and brings together the latest results in a field which has seen phenomenal progress thanks to new techniques, such as the use of radio-isotopes. This progress is set forth, in most of the papers, in relation to the earlier state of knowledge, and the result is a veritable textbook for research workers concerned with silvics, ecology, genetics, and silviculture.
The comprehensive nature of the book can be judged from a listing of the chapter titles: Water relations and sap movement, photosynthesis, biochemistry, mineral nutrition, phloem transport, root growth and other growth phenomena, photoperiodism and thermoperiodism, and reproduction.
According to the preface, this was the first international symposium on forest tree physiology. It is sincerely to be hoped that the Maria Moors Cabot Foundation will be able to sponsor future symposia at suitable intervals in this rapidly developing field which is basic to an understanding of the complex biological phases of forestry
