FOREST SCHOOLS OF THE UNITED STATES 



VII 



Biltmore Forest School 



y^-^HE Biltmore Forest School is unique in the facts that it is connected 

 L^ with no college or university and is a traveling school. It is about to 

 ^*^ enter upon its fourteenth year of existence. It was founded by Dr. 

 C. A. Schenck, forester of the Biltmore estate in North Carolina, in the late 

 summer of 1898 ; and during the first eleven years of its career, it was main- 

 tained on the Biltmore estate. At that time the school was spending one- 

 half of the year in the cut-over woodlands near Biltmore and the other half 

 in the primeval Pisgah Forest, owned by Mr. George "S^anderbilt, near Bilt- 

 more. In 1909 the school severed its connection with the Biltmore estate, 

 retaining, nevertheless, its original name "Biltmore Forest School." 



The" faculty consists of its director and chief lecturer in forestry. Dr. 

 C. A. Schenck, of Dr. H. D. House, chief lecturer on dendrology and botany, 

 and of a number of teachers selected from various universities on account of 

 their special fitness for presenting topics closely related to forestry in con- 

 cise and attractive form. 



Professor George L. Clothier, of the Mississippi State Agricultural Col- 

 lege, lectures on his specialty, prairie planting ; Professor Collier Cobb, of the 

 University of North Carolina, lectures on forest geology; Edgar D. Broad- 

 hurst, of Greensboro, N. C, on forest law ; Franklin Sherman, Jr., state ento- 

 mologist of North Carolina, on entomology; Dr. St. George L. Sioussat, of 

 Vanderbilt University, on economics; Professor H. O. Allison, of the Univer- 

 sity of Missouri, on animal husbandry ; Dr. Hermann von Schrenk, on timber 

 preservation ; R. S. Kellogg, on forest statistics ; and Harry C. Oberholser, of 

 the United States Biological Survey, on forest zoology. In addition, various 

 members of the Forest Service have had the kindness to deliver annually at 

 the school a series of lectures dealing with topics in national forestry. There 

 is a strong probability of the co-operation with the Biltmore Forest School 

 in its European headquarters of Sir William Schlich, upon his retirement 

 from the chair of forestry at Oxford. Ernest Thompson-Seton will spend a 

 week with the school in its Michigan camp. 



The plans and methods of the school are framed on the belief that for- 

 estry can be taught in the forests alone ; that no lectures are so good as those 

 illustrated by object lessons ; that a forest school must be a technical school ; 

 and that an American forester will miss his calling unless he be a trained 

 modern lumberman, superior in knowledge and hence in efficiency to the 

 lumberman of the past. At Biltmore science is taught with a view to the 

 training of practical workers. The school is a small one, and the students 

 are kept in close personal touch with the instructors. 



Travel is an essential means of forest education ; travel, however, is not 

 conducive with the student body to systematic study. The Biltmore Forest 

 School gains the advantages and avoids the dangers connected with travel 

 in the following manner: It has established a circuit of five distinct head- 

 quarters; and its travels are restricted to the five journeys between them. 



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