444 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



XXXIII. Hints on the Training of Foresters. 

 By R. C. Munro Ferguson, M.P. 



A concise little pamphlet, giving clear instructions and useful 

 hints to huntsmen, written by Colonel Anstruther Thomson some 

 years ago, has suggested the idea that notes on the same lines 

 might be a helpful addition to such training as is now offered to 

 young foresters. Experienced foresters, and especially those who 

 are heads of families, might gather from such a paper hints useful 

 for the education of boys intended for their own profession. 

 Under present circumstances the best forester is likely to come 

 out of a forester's family, for we have to depend on home rather 

 than on technical training. Home training is of special utility 

 in this country, because, as is often fairly urged, such training is 

 more essential for the needs of manj estates than is the most 

 up-to-date education in a Continental forest school. Most owners 

 want their fine trees, their effective ornamental plantations, and 

 their good game coverts continued as they were laid down by 

 their forefathers. At any rate, although a believer in scientific 

 training for all purposes, I do not propose here to enter into the 

 relative value of the scientifically educated and the self -trained 

 forester, but simply to note the aims which should be within the 

 reach of nearly all foresters. 



The advantages of home training and early arboricultural 

 associations are shown in the fact that a large proportion of 

 excellent foresters come from the woodland areas of the Moray 

 basin and of Perthshire, and that amongst this class are to be 

 found those who most readily assimilate improved methods in the 

 practice of forestry. 



The man who intends to make a forester of his boy should turn 

 the child's attention, and, if necessary, that of his schoolmaster, to 

 such subjects as botany, entomology, physical geography, and 

 neology — though he should not limit the scope of the boy's edu- 

 cation to these subjects, for he must be trained as a citizen of the 

 world, and be prepared, after the manner of his race, to take any 

 post that fortune may offer him. The mind should not be con- 

 fined to the technicalities of any one profession, nor the vision 

 limited to the bounds of any one country. Even at home a 

 forester's duties are often comprehensive, and he frequently makes 

 an excellent ground-officer or under-factor : we probably all know 



