EUROPEAN STUDY FOR FORESTERS. 



By a. B. Recknagel and Theodore S. Woolsey, Jr. 



Most professional foresters will agree that a thorough know- 

 ledge of home conditions is the first requisite ; therefore if a forest 

 school graduate must choose between a first hand knowledge of 

 his own country and a trip abroad, he should by all means first 

 become acquainted with the Pacific Coast, the Rocky Mountains, 

 the Southern Appalachians, the Southern pineries, and the hard- 

 w^ood, pine and spruce forests of the North. In other words it is 

 usually advisable to defer study abroad until a few years after 

 graduation. Then too the man fresh from his schooling is 

 satiated with theory and requires a year or two of practice. He 

 soon finds that the practice of forestry is limited by what can be 

 done under the local conditions. He soon discovers that his 

 theory is merely a crude foundation upon which he must build 

 little by little. He must learn the exceptions, often by making 

 mistakes. He must appreciate that nature has the final word and 

 that nature has no exact rules. The prevailing wind which may 

 govern the progress of the felling series may blow from the 

 opposite direction just when a stand is vulnerable. But if theor}^ 

 does not hold good, why study the theory in the practice of the 

 older countries? Because one has the limitations driven home 

 time and again, because one's judgment is broadened, because one 

 learns a great many "tricks of the trade" that can be applied 

 directly in America. Especially if a man is assigned to a Western 

 Forest, his work may be so narrowed that his horizon will be 

 reams of accounts, letters for dictation and other deadening red 

 tape. To sum up, a forester would gain more from a trip abroad 

 if he waited, say two or three years after graduation — not long 

 enough to get hopelessly in a rut but long enough to have put into 

 practice some of the school theory. 



Naturally there are a great many men who cannot travel until 

 after five or ten years and then only for a short trip. Even three 

 months would fully repay such a man for the trouble and expense. 

 The Government Employee, the State Forester, the Consulting 

 Forester, and particularly the Professor would do well to look 



