1888. | NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 30 
practical instruction than for high scientific education. To im- 
part the latter, and to raise the higher officers in the Depart- 
ment of Forestry, the world-known Academy at Nancy is de- 
signed, and is considered fully sufficient for all France. At 
«* Barres,” instruction is given only in some sciences, in order 
to enable men brought up in common schools to concentrate 
their mental power upon practical subjects. Only during the 
four winter months, therefore, is elementary information given 
to them in mathematics, surveying and levelling, and forest 
botany, zoology and entomology ; while thorough instruction is 
furnished in the management of forests, with special reference 
to their artificial and spontaneous re-stocking ; in the modes of 
finding out the amount of net income from the forests; and 
finally, in the laws and regulations by which the administration 
of forests is governed. 
This institution is now a public one. A certain number of 
young men, between the ages of nineteen and twenty-four, are 
every year received, and after two years of study, and then pass- 
ing the examination, they get appointments to the lower posi- 
tions among the forest-officers, advancing to higher positions 
after some years’ service and having passed further examinations. 
The pupils, like our West Point cadets, are educated entirely at 
public expense, receiving even a small salary as pocket-money. 
But they have, during the seven working months of the year 
(one being devoted to rest and vacation), to perform every 
manual labor required on the farm in cultivating the soil, raising 
seeds and seedlings for nearly free distribution among the 
French farmers, and all other work connected with the institu- 
tion. Besides this, they have to do in the adjoining State forests 
every kind of labor which is needed to retain the woods in a first- 
rate condition; they therefore have personally to do the seed- 
ing, planting, thinning, and cutting of trees, making roads, 
openings, ditches, etc., in order to learn practically every work 
that may occur in the course of systematic treatment of forests, 
as these later will come under their care and guidance. 
To establish in or near the Adirondacks a school like this 
would be a move in the right direction for bringing into effect the 
well-meant provision of the quoted Section 18 of the Forestry 
Act. It is true that the report of the Forestry Division of the 
Agricultural Department at Washington, published in 1884, 
very strongly recommends the establishment of schools of for 
estry by the Federal Government. But to wait till this sensible 
advice should be acted upon, would show too much faith in the 
activity of our Congress regarding matters other than simply 
political. It is the duty of each State in the Union to take care 
of its forestal interests, and to educate its own officers, especially 
