oO ee ee 
1906-7.] . Do WE NEED A FORESTRY COLLEGE? 303 
left the public service for more lucrative positions with large lumber 
concerns in British Columbia. 
It is not expected that the College of Forestry will turn out men 
who would be immediately competent to take the management of large 
lumber operations. The School of Practical Science does not pretend 
to turn out well equipped engineers with the necessary practical experi- 
ence. In the same way graduates of the new College of Forestry must 
acquire much of their practical knowledge after they leave college, but 
unless I am much mistaken in my estimate of the gentleman who is to be 
Dean of the Faculty of Forestry, the graduates of the Ontario College 
of Forestry will take rank with those of any other College on the Con- 
tinent. 
The need for trained foresters in Ontario is already apparent. It 
will become more apparent as it becomes generally recognized that a for- 
ester is primarily a lumberman, though a lumberman may not necessarily 
be a forester. A forester is a farmer whose crops are trees. He is not 
a sentimental theorist, but a business man engaged in a business that re- 
quires a technical knowledge of natural conditions affecting his crop, and 
whose plans in the sowing and reaping of his crop must extend over long 
periods of years. So long as we merely harvest the matured crop of trees 
nature has provided for us, the scientifically trained man is not so neces- 
sary, but when we reach the stage where future crops must be provided 
for, a knowledge of the nature of forest growth and reproduction is im- 
perative. 
In the policy of separating the agricultural from the non-agricultural 
lands, keeping the latter for the perpetual production of timber, now 
adopted in Ontario in the creation of forest reserves, we have reached 
that stage, and there is every reason to expect that properly trained 
foresters such as we expect Dr. Fernow to turn out, will not be without 
employment in this Province. 
