Arboriculture as a Hobby. 291 



young and old in connection with the arboretum — a collection of 

 cones, for instance, or leaves, or insects, which do damage to 

 the different trees. The smaller the latter collection the better 

 the owner should be pleased. 



I should like to touch on another side of the subject. At 

 present in most country places the lads leaving school look to 

 the farms for employment, or to the village joiner, or perhaps, 

 if they are more pushing, they go to the towns. Generally the 

 boys have had a grounding in botany from books. They often 

 think it a dry subject. Many of them cannot tell the difference 

 between two of the trees that grow just outside the school. 

 They are trees to them, nothing else. If such a place as I have 

 been dreaming about were at hand, and the proprietor gave per- 

 mission to the schoolmaster to take his botany class there to point 

 out in nature what the boys had read of in books, it would make 

 them take an intelligent interest in the subject. They would see 

 trees from France, Spain, India, America, Japan, and many 

 other countries. The botany lesson, in fact, could well be 

 combined with a geography lesson in the arboretum. Perhaps, 

 then, lads who otherwise might become farm labourers, or would 

 drift away to the towns to swell the ranks of the casually em- 

 ployed, might see their way clear to entering a skilled and 

 interesting profession, which would give more opportunity of 

 advancement to those who would take the trouble to help them- 

 selves by studying the different branches, both from books and 

 from nature itself. They would have had an insight into 

 the methods employed to bring trees to perfection, and into the 

 needs of each class of tree. If they went in for the profession 

 they would most probably make good workmen, as they would 

 know, for instance, why it is better for a tree to be planted with 

 its roots in a natural position, instead of being cramped and 

 doubled up. In time, with the help of their masters, they might 

 get into the botanical gardens or one of the too few forestry 

 schools of Great Britain, and gradually work up to the top of 

 the tree, instead of crawling away at the bottom with no more 

 interest in their work than is to be got from looking at their 

 watches to see how near it is to " lousing " time. 



