384 JOURNAL OF FORESTRY 



tancy arises from his realization that since his graduation, be it ever 

 so recent, the courses of study in his old school, and in fact the 

 entire method of teaching, may have changed so radically as to render 

 valueless any criticism, based on his practical experience, of the course 

 of study which he pursued in the forest school. The natural result 

 of this has been the failure of the very men whose opinions would 

 perhaps be worth most to their school to communicate them to the 

 faculty as a basis for keeping the course up to date, or for moulding 

 the system of study to meet the practical needs of the graduates. In 

 a broader sense the forestry profession and our current literature have 

 suffered through the failure of the administrative men to write on 

 problems of administration. Our professional writings have been too 

 often confined to articles of a highly technical nature, with the result 

 that while we are fairly well informed on form quotients and the 

 fifty-seven varieties of regulating yield, we have had very few 

 articles on "How to Run a National Forest," "How to Secure Appro- 

 priations from an Unwilling Legislature," and other absorbing and 

 esoteric topics. The usual reply, that such topics are not easy to write 

 about satisfactorily only emphasizes the need for certain types 

 of training at the forest schools and colleges, which will be later 

 referred to. 



If in the face of the above pronouncements I undertake a criti- 

 cism of forest education, and some comment on its bearing on our 

 alleged professional stagnation, it is in no vainglorious hope of being 

 better equipped to attempt what other men have shrunk from, but in 

 a desire to have the subject of forestry education reopened, this time 

 more from the standpoint of the administrative man. The pages of 

 the Journal, particularly during 1918, have been well supplied with 

 able discussions of forestry education, chiefly by teachers and men in 

 investigative lines. Is it too much to expect that with a little urging 

 the administrative men — State foresters as well as those in the Fed- 

 eral service — may now be persuaded to make themselves heard ? Like 

 a motion to adjourn, the discussion of so fundamental a subject as 

 forest education would seem always to be in order. 



The time is not so remote since, as a senior at the forest school, the 

 writer was devoting many hours of thought and much discussion with 

 his classmates to the question of what he was going to do upon gradu- 

 ation. Those were the days of fevered correspondence with State 

 foresters (who regretted that they had "nothing immediate to offer, but 



