1894. NOTES FROM THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 219 



be and should be dealt with as forest cultivated on scientific 

 principles. These might serve as instruction areas, showing all that 

 is best for the information of foresters. The creation of some such 

 experimental teaching stations in State forests is one of the essentials 

 for forestry in Britain. I would go further, and say that the area of 

 State ownership should be increased to the extent of the establish- 

 ment of forest stations, of an acreage sufficient to allow of a satisfac- 

 tory rotation, in other parts of the country as centres of instruction." 

 " In a practical science like forestry an increase of sound technical 

 knowledge can only be possible when facilities for practical instruction 

 are provided. I would, therefore, ask the President of ihe Board of 

 Agriculture to consider what I have just said with regard to State 

 forest experimental areas. These cannot, of course, be created 

 by a stroke of the pen, but the initiative for their formation 

 would naturally come from the Board of Agriculture." " It appears 

 to me that while we must obtain from the Government the 

 institution of sylvicultural areas for practical instruction, our best 

 chance of success in acquiring the necessary endowment for the 

 rest of the teaching lies in the line of combination between the 

 Board of Agriculture and the County Councils, with, it may be, aid 

 from private benefactors. But if we were to draw financial support 

 from County Councils or from private sources, we must as a first step 

 towards this make known, more thoroughly than it is, the nature of 

 the national interests involved. We must disabuse landowners, land 

 agents, and practical foresters of the notion that forestry consists in 

 the random sticking in of trees, which anyone, no matter how unskilled,- 

 may accomplish. We must bring home to the people's minds that in 

 science is to be found the only sure guide to proper timber growing, 

 and that scientifically managed forests are alike a profit to the pro- 

 ducer, a benefit to the community of the region in which they are 

 reared, and a source of national wealth. Once we have got so far as 

 to create this opinion, the funds for as extended a scheme of forestry 

 education as may be necessary will, I venture to think, be forth- 

 coming." 



Turning from the duties of the nation to the duties of botanists, 

 Professor Balfour urged upon them the necessity of paying more 

 attention to the subject, for it is from the ranks of botanists that 

 the directors of future schemes of afforestation and the teachers of 

 practical foresters must come. 



The Nucleus in Plants. 



The next subject of botanical interest we shall mention is a very 

 technical one, and a subject in which none but the scientific public 

 could possibly take an interest. At one of the meetings of the 

 Biological Section Professor Strasburger gave an admirably clear 

 account of his researches on the periodic variation in the number of 

 chromosomes in the nuclei of plant cells. After discussing the 



