46 Forestry Quarterly. 



we shall and should have schools preparing men for special lines 

 of work or the solving of local or sectional problems. That is, 

 the logical development of a school in the Pacific northwest is 

 along lines of utilization. There is unquestionably need for a 

 school especially strong along similar lines in the northeast. 



The tremendous development of the Forest Service, carrying 

 with it the development of state and private work from 1900 to 

 191 1, made it possible for almost any man with some practical 

 sense, and a little more silviculture and mensuration to get a 

 position in forestry. Many of these earlier foresters were mis- 

 fits, but thanks to our American optimism and adaptability more 

 found their places and are doing a splendid pioneer work in the 

 introduction of forestry in this country. Last year, however, 

 more men came from the schools than there were places for, and 

 this will undoubtedly continue to be so until there is a fairly 

 definite idea of the number of men to be needed each year. This 

 condition of over-supply is having already a healthy influence 

 both upon the attendance and scholarship in institutions giving 

 instruction in forestry. Fewer students will enter courses in 

 forestry from now on but those who come will be stronger because 

 determined to succeed in spite of increasing competition. 



Up to last year also, many men from undergraduate courses 

 entered the government service through the same channel, the 

 Civil Service examination, as the men from the post-graduate 

 schools and are given apparently the same opportunity for de- 

 velopment. In a sense, a man with a favorable personality, who 

 has had four years of work in science, including from two to three 

 years of forestry subjects, who has worked during the entire four 

 years under the same men and with the idea of preparing himself 

 for forestry should be as well if not better prepared for practical 

 work in the profession than a man who has spent four years in 

 an arts course or even in an agricultural or scientific course, where 

 the goal has not been forestry, and then spends two years in a 

 post-graduate school. In another sense, of course, there is no 

 reason to expect that a man who has had but four years of train- 

 ing and who has perforce neglected certain important cultural 

 subjects, is as ready for the practice of his profession as a man of 

 more maturity coming from a post-graduate school. The ad- 

 dition of a year to the four year training, keeping the students 



