COr^FERENCE ON FORESTRY EDUCATION. 53 



hope means may be provided, wherever Forestry is taught in 

 Scotland, for allowing the students to learn practically how to do 

 the different operations. There is another point connected with 

 my own experience which I think worth while mentioning. 

 Some thirty years or more ago I was a student at the Forestry 

 School at Nancy. Before going to Nancy we were sent to the 

 forest in Alsace to learn the language, and see the trees, and see 

 how the work was carried on, and to learn the technical terms in 

 forestry. And I can confidently say the eight months I spent in 

 the forests before going to the School taught me more than I 

 learned in the School itself. At any rate, it gave me the enor- 

 mous advantage of enabling me to compete on good terms with 

 my French fellow-students when I went to the School, Many of 

 them had scarcely ever seen a forest when they went to the School. 

 I myself was brought up in London, and had scarcely ever seen 

 a forest before I went there, and I do not know what I would 

 have done without the forest experience. I want to recommend 

 that the students be taken out for a short while, shown what 

 forestry is like, what a forest is, taught something of the technical 

 terms, made to recognise the principal trees, and generally get 

 an idea of what the subject is they are going to deal with. We 

 introduced the same system with considerable advantage in 

 India, and all the students had to go through two or three 

 months' teaching in the forest before they were allowed to attend 

 a single lecture. Something of the kind will be of advantage 

 here too. After all, we have now excellent books on forestry, 

 and everybody can read, and those who are studying forestry 

 can work up those books. A lecturer cannot do very much more 

 in the class-room than tell you what is in the books. But if he 

 is on the ground, even if only in the public park, he can illustrate 

 his subject and make it much more comprehensible than when 

 he is sitting daily in a class-room. I hope that when this model 

 demonstration forest has been obtained — in fact I suppose it is 

 the first thing to be done — steps will be taken at once to place it 

 under a really good, well-conceived working-plan, because I do not 

 look on a forest as a business-like property until it has a working- 

 plan. It is as if a farmer were to go to work hap-hazard, sowing 

 his corn, clipping his sheep, or hoeing his turnips in a happy-go- 

 lucky manner. That working-plan should be printed, and should 

 have a map, and every student should have a copy of the plan 

 and the map, so that when he is taken out he can follow out 



