CONFERENCE ON FORESTRY EDUCATION. 5 I 



V. Conference on Forestry Education. 



In connection with the Society's Jubilee, a Conference was 

 held in the Lecture Room of the Perthshire Society of Natural 

 Science, Tay Street, Perth, on 22nd July 1904. A General 

 Meeting of the Society was held in the same place, and after the 

 formal business had been disposed of, the discussion was opened 

 by Mr J. Sykes Gamble, C.I.E., who read the following paper 

 on " Forestry Education " : — 



Mr Gamble said : I feel it a great compliment to have been 

 asked to come here and open the discussion on such a very 

 important subject as that of Forestry Education. I take the 

 opportunity also of thanking the Society for their having so very 

 kindly made me an Honorary Member. That was a great com- 

 pliment for which I hoped three years ago to have been able to 

 thank them in person, but circumstances prevented that being 

 done. 



I think it well to begin the remarks I have to make on the 

 Education question by congratulating the Society again on the 

 very foremost position it has taken up in putting forward the 

 claims of Forestry to be recognised as a branch of education in 

 Scotland, and of course elsewhere. I believe firmly that these 

 efforts will in the end be fully and thoroughly successful, and I 

 think a great deal of the success, when it comes, will be due 

 to the work of this Society. 



In talking about Forestry Education, I do not propose 

 to go into the questions which have been already discussed, 

 but to indicate more particularly a few points which I think it 

 right to dwell upon, and which have come to some extent under 

 my own personal experience. The chief point to my mind in 

 all that has been talked about in connection with Forestry 

 Education in Scotland, is the need of having a model or 

 demonstration forest, in which the teaching of the lecture-room 

 could be explained practically, and where students could 

 familiarise themselves with the trees that compose a forest, their 

 sylvicultural requirements, see the work going on, and know 

 what will be expected of them when they go to business. The 

 necessity of such a forest has been admitted practically every- 

 where. The reasons for it I need not further refer to, because 



