110 ON PRUNING. [JcNE 



dealt instructively with many branches of the subject, but there was 

 one to which he had not referred. In the Black Forest and in 

 Switzerland the young people were profitably employed in making 

 the thousands of toys which were imported into this country^ 

 There was no reason why many thousands of our unemployed and 

 starving population might not find the means of subsistence in this 

 industry. The Prime Minister had deprecated the interference of 

 the State, but the State had in Holland reclaimed the land from the 

 sea, and here at home was expending its resources in teaching many 

 subjects to the children of the poor, which, from a wage-earning 

 point of view, were absolutely useless. (Hear, hear.) It would be 

 much wiser that children should receive good technical training .in 

 the trades by which they were to make their living. (Hear, hear.) 



Sir G. Campbell thought one had no need to go farther than 

 Kensington Gardens to see what a lamentable want existed of 

 scientific forestry in this country. He agreed that the Indian 

 Forestry Department had done good work, but he was inclined to 

 think that it had been a little overpraised, as there w\as a great 

 want of scientific method in the system which it pursued. 



Mr. Ackers said that subject was one in which the three 

 kingdoms were equally interested. There was no good School of 

 Forestry in the country, and the art of forestry might be said to be 

 absolutely unknown. Similar treatment was apparently applied to 

 all trees alike, and it did not appear to be known that what was 

 good for one tree killed another. While agreeing with the Prime 

 Minister that there should be no foregone conclusion, he hoped the 

 matter would not be entered upon with the idea that a School of 

 Forestry was not necessary, and that Government assistance should 

 not be given to it. 



Sir J. Lubbock's motion was then agreed to. 



OX PRUNING. 



BY WILLIAM SUTHERLAND. 



WHY WE PEUNE. — To the arboriculturist, a tree growing as 

 nature directs, represents the shapeless block of marble 

 ready for the sculptor's chisel, or the raw material of the manu- 

 facturer. But a tree is a thing of life under fixed laws of develop- 

 ment, not an inert mass. So, while the sculptor eliminates from his 

 marble a creation of his imagination, the forester has to make 

 himself acquainted with the particular mode of life of each tree on 

 which he proposes to operate, so as to mould it into a thing of 



