1885.] ATTACK ON FRENCH FOREST SERVICE. 329 



the French Government have up to the present time happily turned 

 a deaf ear ; and it is to be hoped that they will continue to receive, 

 as they have done this year, the support of Parliament in with- 

 standing what would practically be the death-knell of the French 

 Forest Department as a scientific body. Nor was the attack in any 

 way justified on the ground of favouring the rich to the detriment 

 of the poor, further than as regards the advantage which a superior 

 education must give to any man whatever ; for a really able and 

 intelligent Forest Guard (and there are many such in France) can 

 work his way upwards in the service under present conditions with 

 far greater chance of success through the school at Barres, than 

 would an idle pupil with the superior education of the Nancy 

 School. But as a matter of fact, this attack in the Parliament has 

 been simply a barefaced attempt to make a short-cut to the plums 

 of the service for the subordinate grades over the heads of those 

 who, by a long, toilsome, and expensive course of education, have 

 earned the right to them, and, moreover, have so rendered them- 

 selves capable of filling the situations in au efficient manner. 



It should be especially noticed that in the whole of this debate, 

 not one word was said against tlie high moral tone of the members 

 of the French Forest Service as a body ; nor was the value of the 

 instruction given at the Nancy School for one moment impeached. 

 The writer of these lines was on terms of close intimacy witli 

 members of the French Forest Service in all parts of France during 

 eleven years, and he may, perhaps, be permitted to place on record 

 here his belief that in no country, and by no body of men, is the 

 public service performed with greater honesty and more zeal, and on 

 the whole with greater intelligence, than it is in France by the 

 present race of French foresters, who have been brought up at the 

 Nancy School. 



It seems, perhaps, unfortunate that at a time when persons 

 interested in forest education in Scotland have been making great 

 efforts to institute in that country a system of scientific forest 

 training, — when the increasing interest in the question both in that 

 country and iu England was so clearly shown by the success 

 which attended the Forestry Exhibition last year in Edinburgh, — 

 and when the Indian Government have begun to train their forest 

 pupils at Cooper's Hill, instead of sending them abroad, that 

 people's faith should receive a shock by ^seeing an attack of this 

 sort made on one of the oldest and best forest schools in Europe. 

 But Scotch and English foresters need not be alarmed at this ; for 

 in spite of the vast amount of frothy talk in this debate, a careful 

 perusal of it will show, that not a word was said in the whole of 

 it against the value of special instruction in the management of 



