opinions of Continental Foresters and Professors. 759 



advocates for a change had, he alleged, through fear of an adverse 

 vote, moved the arena to Freiburg as a more likely place at which to 

 obtain a decision of the question in accordance with their views. 

 And yet it appears, from the account given by Herr Lehr, that more 

 than three-fourths of the Prussian forest officials present at this 

 Freiburg congress voted in favour of a university education in forest 

 science and forestry. 



The speaker stated his views of the functions of a university in 

 education ; which were that universities were organized on the principle 

 of freedom of thought and speech, and were prinuirily designed for the 

 thorough treatment of subjects of study in the abstract rathei' than in 

 the concrete. They might be rich fountains of knowledge, but they 

 did not pretend to teach practical skill. But the forest academies, 

 on the contrary, kept the practical ever in sight ; the prosecution of 

 research was directed in accordance with forest science, and knowledge 

 was combined with practice. There were four things to be desired: 

 first, instruction in the technical work of forestry ; next, instruction in 

 the administrative management of forests; next to this, in scientific 

 research; and lastly, in the practical application of established theory. 

 Whatever would best secure all of these was the best arrangement 

 possible, and he indicated his opinion to be that it was by means of 

 special schools of forestry that this would be done. 



Referring to the preference of the Bavarian Commission for the 

 study of forest science and of forestry in connection with a Hocli- 

 nchule, he alleged that most of the Hovhscliulni were located far from 

 any forest, and the professors were not necessarily men acquainted with 

 forests, and the result might be, the students might come to know many 

 things but to know no one thing thoroughly. 



Referring to the compulsory study of practical chemistry at Carlsruhe, 

 and to similar arrangements in other institutions, he said it could lead 

 only to confusion. The students would remain strangers to forests; 

 they would not learn how to question trees ; they would see, indeed, 

 cases filled with dead insects, but they would learn nothing of the lives 

 of insects. Even the university professor in the forest would be little 

 better than a blind man. 



The assailants of forest academies attach little value to the vicinity 

 of a forest, he said, but much to railway excursions. One considers 

 any locality suitable if it be near a railway junction ; another speaks 

 disparagingly even of excursions as Waldbunimdeicn, or sauntering 

 strolls in a forest. If we would make the forest a means of in- 

 struction, it should be simply and solely a demonstration ground, and 

 the forest it^c/tT — (r forest division — solely an experiment Bcvier ; and 

 it should be so situated that it can be visited daily without fatigue and 

 without expense. If these conditions be not secured, then is the 



