1885.] ATTACK ON FRENCH FOREST SERVICE. 327 



their village woods for their own wants, with unrestricted grazing 

 to their sheep and cattle, were it not for the veto of the district 

 forest officer on their proceedings. Happily it is not always so ; 

 and there are in France many intelligent mayors of parishes, who 

 give their cordial support to the forest officer in his endeavours to 

 improve the village woodland property. 



As regards the third objection, that the forest officers are governed 

 by routine and inaccessible to new ideas, the main charge seems to 

 resolve itself into the fact that the department has failed to take 

 up the system of forest working placed before the public by a 

 retired forest officer, a well - known enthusiast (M. Gurnaud), 

 who proposed by it to double the out-turn of a forest, and who, 

 failing to get either the forest department or the public to adopt 

 his views, has managed by well-known means to get them venti- 

 lated in Parliament. As a matter of fact, one of the persons whom 

 he succeeded in converting to his views, placed a large private forest 

 at his disposal in which to carry out his experiments ; but as yet 

 he has entirely failed to demonstrate the correctness of his hypo- 

 theses. At present, under the pressure exercised by the financial 

 department to force extraordinary fellings, there is scarcely a 

 State forest in France that is not now suffering from being over- 

 worked, to the great regret of the forest officers in charge. As to 

 the accusation that the French forest officers are mere routiners, 

 perhaps the fact that they are a highly-educated body of men is 

 the best guarantee against the charge. We now come to the last 

 and most serious of the objections, viz. that which refers to the 

 Nancy School, and the education of the French forest officers. It 

 is in this that the kernel of the debate lies, and to understand it, 

 it wUl be necessary briefly to explain the sources from which the 

 Forest Service iu France is recruited. 



These are two, namelj', the Forest School at Nancy, and the 

 School of Barres (at Nogent-sur-Vernissiou, Loiret). The entrance 

 to the Nancy Scliool is either by open competition, or to passed 

 pupils of the Polytechnic School,^ or to two pupils per annum from 

 the Central Agricultural Institute at Paris, who have passed a 

 certain standard. In order to compete for the open examination, a 

 candidate must have taken his Bachelor in Science degree at the 

 University, — that is to say, must have a considerable knowledge of 

 Higher and Applied Mathematics, as well as of Chemistry, Physics, 

 and Science generally, — and he must not be above twenty years of 

 age. The course at Nancy extends over two years ; after which 

 the pupils, if passing out successfully, go through a course of 



' The pupils of the Polytechnic Scliool of Paris pass at once into the Engineers, 

 Artillery, as well as the PubUc Works and Forest Services. 



