PROBLEMS IN FORESTRY EDUCATION 643 



present time as to whether the forest schools have kept up with devel- 

 opments as fully as they should. 



Let us glance back over the past once more. With the rapid growth 

 of the forestry movement there came also a rapid increase in the num- 

 ber of forest schools. During the past few years the bugaboo of the 

 overcrowding of the forestry profession caused considerable anxiety 

 both among the school men and those in the Service.^ The school men 

 were continually confronted by "What are you going to do with all the 

 young foresters ?" until they began to wonder about it themselves. 

 Here, again, there have been changing conditions that have solved the 

 problem completely. The graduates have made places for themselves 

 by entering fields hitherto not properly served by technical men. This 

 has resulted in two rather severe criticisms of the forest schools : ( i ) 

 That they were shunting their graduates off into fields of work only 

 remotely associated with forestry, and (2) if they modified their cur- 

 ricula to meet the new conditions, that they were drifting away from 

 forestry and trespassing in the fields of other established departments 

 of the university organization.^ Both of these criticisms hinge on the 

 question, "What is the legitimate field of the forest school?" and closely 

 associated with this, "What is a forester?" 



If informal discussion by small groups of interested men may be 

 taken as any indication, these questions will perhaps stir up a goodly 

 amount of controversy. The author will not attempt a complete answer 

 to the question, "What is a forester?" but he does feel that the term 

 "forester" has been too closely hedged in by its relation to silviculture 

 and management. It is time for the profession to recognize that for- 

 estry is not like a dead language, but that it is a living, growing system 

 of knowledge. In this connection it should not be necessary to have to 

 refer to the history of the term. The field of the forester has changed 

 in the past; it is now undergoing some marked changes, and we may 

 expect it to change still more in the future. And why should we not 

 reach out and develop our field of useful endeavor through every legiti- 

 mate channel? The mere reason that a man is a specialist in some 

 phase of forestry not directly associated with silvicultural practice or 

 forest management has been sufficient in the past to brand him as not 

 worthy a place in the profession. Quite recently one of the member- 

 ship committee of the Society voted against a forest-school graduate of 

 some accomplishment and considerable promise in wood preservation 



*Toumcy: The Interdependence of Forest Conservation and Forestry Educa- 

 tion. Science, N. S., Vol. XLIV, No. 1132, p. 327. 

 *01nistcad: What is a Forester? J. F., Vol. XI, p. 230. 



