898 EXPERIMENT STATION EECORD. 



cent is in timber, and much of tbis is scrub growth of little value. On the 

 other hand, importations of timber aggregate $5,000,000 per year. Steps are to 

 be taken under the direction of the Irish department of agriculture, through the 

 forest school at Avondale, to bring about the conservation of the remaining for- 

 ests and the replanting of considerable areas. A popular objection to this pro- 

 cedure has been that forest plantations offer less employment to labor than 

 equal areas of agricultural land. A study of conditions on the estate of Lord 

 Fitzwilliam, which was planted to timber 50 years ago, shows, however, that 

 although the soil selected was unsuitable for agriculture, four times as much 

 labor has been employed as upon the agricultural land, and the forest tract was 

 also more i)rofitable to the owner. 



At Oxford University the number of forestry students enrolled in 1907 num- 

 bered 57. The forest gardens and experimental plantations have been largely 

 increased, and it is proposed to add a lecture theater, a class room, museum, 

 laboratory, and professor's room, to be ready by the end of the year. 



The province of British Columbia has established a system of forest reserves 

 as a means of checking the wasteful exploitation of timber resources and 

 bringing the care and control of timber more effectually under government con- 

 trol than under the previous policy of leasing timber lauds for a term of years. 

 All timber lauds not already leased are included in the reserves, which aggre- 

 gate over 150,000,000 acres, a tract substantially equal to the area of the forest 

 reserves in the United States but much less heavily wooded. 



Agricultural Education in Ontario. — The April number of the 0. A. C. Review 

 contains an interesting discussion of problems of the rural schools and agri- 

 cultural education in the elementary and secondary grades and of some recent 

 experiments in Ontario in agricultural education. In the opinion of one of 

 the inspectors of public schools, the means for improving rural education appear 

 to be vitally connected with the " training of rural teachers under conditions 

 that will develop what may be called the agricultural spirit." He doubts 

 whether this cau be accomplished in normal schools or training schools lo- 

 cated in towns, but believes that the establishment of rural traiuing schools is 

 an absolute necessity and that a normal training school should be affiliated 

 with the Ontario Agricultural College as has been done in Quebec and several 

 of the States in this country. 



The professor of botany at the Ontario Agricultural College iu discussing 

 the traiuing of teachers for rural schools follows a similar line of argument. 

 He ascribes the nonsuccess of previous efforts to introduce agriculture into 

 the schools to failure to provide proper preparation for the teacher. The whole 

 system of schools " has unconsciously militated against the children of the 

 country schools securing an education for rural life. They had their studies 

 directed and shaped by the town school influence. The rural teachers received 

 their higher academic training in town or city ; their professional training in 

 the graded model school of a town or the more highly specialized normal 

 school located in a city. Everywhere the environment was urban. The teacher 

 came back into the country consciously or unconsciously bringing the town 

 with him. The natural sympathy that might exist between country-born 

 teacher and country-born pupils became in a measure dulled. The teacher came 

 back to lead the country-born into interests apart from farms and farming." 

 He, too, advocates the establishment of a normal department at Guelph, and 

 concludes that " the day is not far distant when the agricultural colleges 

 of this continent will be regularly engaged in the training of teachers." 



Reference is made to the new regulations of the education department by 

 which teachers in rural or village schools holding certificates in elementary 



