52 TRANSACTION'S OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAI, SOCIETY. 



they were very fully set forth in the paper read to this Society 

 in 1898. 



The model or demonstration forest, when instituted, will prob- 

 ably not be very near to the Edinburgh University and the 

 other colleges — not near enough for the instructors and students to 

 use it daily. But it may be hoped that, in addition to this model 

 forest, a few small areas for teaching purposes will be obtained, 

 where sample plots might be planted, and where the treatment of 

 the different species might be shown after or before the lectures 

 are given, as the case may be. Such sample plots many of 

 you know. Many of you have no doubt recently visited such 

 plots at Coopers Hill. It is a great pity that, under new- 

 circumstances which have arisen, these plots at Coopers Hill will 

 disappear. They do not take long to start ; and something of the 

 kind, I confidently hope, may be established near the teaching 

 places in Scotland. The chief object of doing so is this. 

 Theoretical instruction is all very good, but unless you can 

 combine practical instruction with the theoretical, there are many 

 students who would fail to profit by it. Here in Scotland, of 

 course, a great many students of forestry have been brought up 

 in the middle of the forest, have been in forests from their youth, 

 and know all about the trees already. But there must be others 

 who have not been in the forest, and know very little about it, 

 and to start off to give theoretical lectures to such men before 

 showing them what a forest is like, and what trees are like, and 

 teaching them to distinguish the oak from the ash, the beech 

 from the elm, and the Scottish pine from the spruce, would be 

 rather useless ; and therefore I maintain that the first work to be 

 done is to make sure of having sample plots, and some kind of 

 private forests at hand, whose proprietors will authorise their use 

 for methods of instruction, so that instruction might begin in the 

 forest as much as in the lecture-room. I think also, wherever 

 it is possible to do so, the students themselves should be 

 encouraged during their course to do a good deal of the 

 forestry work. I have been myself director of a forestry educa- 

 tional establishment in India, and one of the points on which 

 we prided ourselves there was that almost all our students 

 were made to do all the work with their hands. They had to 

 tend the nurseries themselves, learn all the parts of thinning, 

 cleaning, pruning, planting, and so on. They were not merely 

 taught how to do it. That is a very important thing, and I 



