1884.] ''WHAT WILL THEY DO WITH THEM?" 7 



The reticence prevailing at the meeting on the extent and scope 

 of the Edinljurgh Forest School did not, we trust, betoken hazy 

 notions. Surely Scotland looks for more than the modest lecture- 

 ship hoped for liy Dr. Cleghoru. Japan points a more enterprising- 

 way, establishing in six years a Forest Academy with no fewer than 

 thirty professors, and over a hundred students. The pity is that 

 tlie financial success of tlie Exhibition has not been such as to leave 

 a nest-egg for the young institution. 



The path of scientific forestry teaching is bestrewed with diffi- 

 culties, — -as witness the previous history of noted agricultural 

 educational establishments. But the failures of the past will in this 

 instance be only way-marks for future success. Forestry is mani- 

 festly a thing to be taught by demonstration. Hence the necessity 

 of specimens which may be freely examined and handled by students. 

 Therefore a museum is the absolute foundation of a School of 

 Forestry. Hence the apparent need of this new institution, apart 

 from the capital Forestry Department of the Edinburgh Museum of 

 Science and Art — an institution of which too little has been heard 

 in arboricultural circles. The new museum will require large 

 additions, besides those already acquired, to make it truly educational. 

 But this we hope is a question of time. How the new Forestry 

 School is to be equipped, bulks too largely to be attacked at the 

 fag-end of an article We might suggest four demonstrators and 

 an equal nvimber of professors to start with. A contemporary 

 proposes that scientific horticulture and agriculture should also be 

 taught. As most of the teaching would fall to the demonstrators, 

 the professors need only deliver short courses, as is done in the great 

 Knglish Universities, say of twelve to twenty lectures each. But 

 we content ourselves meanwhile by indicating broad lines of dis- 

 cussion. 



