192 The JoiLrnal of Fores I ry. 



Painters', Coopers', Shipwrights', Weavers', Loriners', Spectacle-makers', 

 and Glass-sellers' Companies ; and that a committee was appointed to 

 prepare a scheme in furtherance of the object of the meeting. 



The reporter adds, " It may now be said that the Corporation and the 

 companies have set themselves to work in earnest in the cause of tech- 

 nical education, and thus united they can hardly fail of success." 



With so many of the companies directly interested in the timber trade 

 why might not instruction in the forest science of the day, and its applica- 

 tion to the management of woods and forests, be included iu th€ arrange- 

 ments to be made ? 



I send with this a statement of the arrangements made iu the Poly- 

 technic School at Carlsruhe for the study of forest science and of forest 

 economy, which will show the practicability of including provision for the 

 study of forestry in a broad scheme for technical education. 



It will also show, which may be of use otherwise, how broad and com- 

 prehensive is the iustruotiou deemed requisite for foresters on the con- 

 tinent of Europe compared with what is given to foresters generally in 

 England. 



As to the honour which may attach to priority in founding a School of 

 Forestry iu Britain, Palmam qui meruit /era t. 



John C. Broww. 



Haddingkn, 14//^ Jane, 1877. 



THE POPLARS OF CLAPHAM COMMON". 



Sir, — I am not going to imitate those ingenious correspondents who begin 

 their communications to you by eulogising your undertaking and the spirit 

 in which you have put it before us. If I limit myself to stating that I am 

 ready to endorse all they have said in its favour, you will, I dare say, be as 

 well pleased as if I had gone a more roundabout way to show my good 

 manners. No doubt you have better evidences than polite phraseology that 

 your work will succeed; and "words butter no parsnips," as I learned 

 many years ago from the sage admonitions of my honoured grandmother. 



At page 118 of your last number — for I like to be circumstantial — are 

 some sensible " general remarks," very modestly offered by Mr. William 

 Mainwaring, of Brimfield, who, while renouncing in graceful language all 

 pretension to figures of speech, puts before us some very important arith- 

 metical figures, that seem to me so large of their kind that I take the 

 liberty of calling your attention to them. He tells us where he saw in 

 1868 " some remarkably fine specimens " of the abole poplar, and T am 

 sorry that it was not of his own knowledge, but only from information 

 received, that he gives us the cubical contents of five other trees of the 

 same description " that had been blown down some time previously " — 

 apparently on the same property. 



What impresses me as singular about it is that the great size of these 



