FORESTRY IN BRITAIN. 73 
(1890) was not taken more advantage of by the Government of the 
day. Distributed, even in part, through representative educational 
institutions, it could have provided equipment for technical educa- 
tion of the highest kind beyond our dreams. Thrown at the heads 
of the County Councils, before these bodies had had time to settle 
to their prescribed work, there has been, in the opinion of those 
well qualified to judge, no little waste. You could not create all 
at once the machinery requisite for the most efficacious expenditure 
of half a million of money on technical teaching. Much of the 
work done by these bodies is admirable. It is indeed surprising, in 
the whole circumstances, how efficiently technical instruction has 
been carried out, and no doubt it will improve. But it had a most 
extravagant start. It is difficult to trace, in the general returns of 
the technical education undertaken by the County Councils, the 
details of their work, and I have not been able to discover how far 
forestry has been treated as a subject of instruction. It has not, 
I think, been often included. But the example of Northumberland 
and Durham in respect of the Newcastle chair is one that gives 
encouragement for thinking that if the due importance of forestry 
to the community were made clear, County Councils, in districts 
favourable for forestry and its concomitant industries, might come 
forward with some of the financial support needed for the provision 
of the educational equipment. 
It appears to me that whilst we must obtain from the Govern- 
ment the institution of sylvicultural areas for practical instruction, 
our best chance of success in acquiring the necessary endowment 
for the rest of the teaching lies in the line of combination between 
the Board of Agriculture and the County Councils, with, it may be, 
aid from private benefactors. But if we were to draw financial 
support from County Councils, or from private sources, we must as 
a first step towards this make known, more thoroughly than it is, 
the nature of the national interests involved. We must disabuse 
landowners, land agents, and practical foresters of the notion that 
forestry consists in the random sticking in of trees, which anyone, 
no matter how unskilled, may accomplish. We must bring home 
to the people’s minds that in science is to be found the only 
sure guide to proper timber-growing, and that scientifically 
managed forests are alike a profit to the producer, a benefit to 
the community of the region in which they are reared, and 
a source of national wealth. Once we have got so far as 
to create this opinion, the funds for as extended a scheme 
