Forest School and Education of Forester. 17 



forestry is not kept to a high standard, the fault will lie alone with 

 the trained members of the profession. 



Young men of to-day are often attracted by forestry because it 

 is a new profession, because of the glamour of out-door work in 

 top boots and the rather wide travel which has gone with the 

 work in this country up to the present time. It has and is attract- 

 ing many young men whom, unfortunately for the men them- 

 selves, the years will quickly sift out, and yet there will be many 

 who will get from the profession both permanent pleasure and 

 great opportunity for usefulness and development. The different 

 grades, the different opportunities in the work, which are more 

 apparent than real, have demanded differences in the method of 

 theoretical and practical training and the length of the training. 

 Already we are developing different schools as to our attitude 

 toward practical training ; as to how little or how much one must 

 have and whether the practical work should consist of the study 

 of methods or the application of principles. A considerable num- 

 ber of graduates have been out of our forest schools for from 

 six to eight years and with certain limits the character of their 

 professional work and their development will determine the cor- 

 rectness of the training given in the schools. Unfortunately, the 

 nature of practical work in forestry is such, at least as far as the 

 management of timberlands is concerned, that a man may con- 

 tinue a wrong beginning or the practice of mistaken methods for 

 some little time before such work can be demonstrated as wrong. 



Because of the absolute newness of forestry and the unusual 

 demands on the government bureau having the work in charge 

 for men with at least some training, institutions of every grade 

 giving instruction in forestry have until recently of necessity 

 given undergraduate training to college graduates and others. 

 This is being gradually remedied by the recent development of 

 undergraduate courses and schools ; by the raising of standards 

 for entrance to post graduate work, and by the gradual accumula- 

 tion of a considerable number of trained men to meet the im- 

 mediate needs of the country. The exceedingly strong demand 

 during the past five years for men with some forestry training has 

 put into the field a number who have obtained the training by 

 short cuts, which have been along the line of intensive drilling in 

 methods of practical work with little emphasis of the principles 



