Needs in Forestry Education. 49 



Because much of the early work of the government was in- 

 vestigating and exploring work, there has been a tendency per- 

 haps to place weight upon the natural sciences to the exclusion 

 of a proper amount of surveying and mechanics. The past over- 

 development of courses in the natural sciences is being very 

 generally recognized and in our anxiety to be intensely practical, 

 there lies the danger that we may swing too far toward a train- 

 ing that will prepare our men for the simpler work of the civil 

 and mechanical engineer only without making real foresters of 

 them. 



Might we not go far toward bridging the present gap between 

 the ranger and the technical assistant, and helping the under- 

 graduate school to define its present uncertain sphere if we were 

 to agree that the function of the under-graduate forest school is 

 a training especially strong in civil and mechanical engineering, 

 that the graduates may fit immediately into such work as recon- 

 naissance surveying as practiced in the National Forests, or esti- 

 mating and surveying as now carried out in the Appalachians, or 

 the planning and carrying out of logging operations. We might 

 agree also that a man so trained and with a bachelor's degree only 

 should not be called a forester until he had taken one or two 

 years of advanced work in technical forestry, after a year or two 

 of experience. It is difficult with present demands and ideals to 

 train a forester fully in the ordinary four year forestry course. 

 Yet, the undergraduate school has a field and its graduates must 

 be recognized and why may we not agree as to what that field is, 

 as suggested above. 



