54 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



everything he sees — so that he can follow all the works, and can 

 really learn something in a practical way about it. It will be a 

 very diflficult matter, in finding this forest, to fix on places where 

 all the different important points can be studied, but I suppose 

 really they will be in two or three places. Some will have to be 

 in hardwoods, and some in conifers. 



Dr Nisbet said he agreed with some of the remarks Mr Gamble 

 had made. Like him, he went to a foreign forestry school — in 

 Germany. Before going to the school, he and others were fourteen 

 months in the forest, doing all sorts of manual work, thinning, 

 lopping wood, etc. Of course, this was found of great advantage 

 when they went afterwards to the forest school with practical 

 work at their finger-ends. With regard to forestry education in 

 Britain, it differed very much from forestry education in Germany. 

 All the woods there had working-plans, and every wood there 

 formed an object-lesson in forestry — was a model forest. He did 

 not think, however, that the acquisition of a model forest should 

 precede the foundation of Lectureships on Forestry at different 

 centres. They must remember that every lectureship founded in 

 forestry, in any part of Scotland, was an additional argument for 

 getting a model forest. If they first asked the Government to 

 give twenty thousand pounds for a model forest, and then came at 

 once for lectureships, they would be told, "You have no sooner 

 got your model forest than you want something else." He 

 thought that would rather be putting the cart before the horse. 

 When they bought the land for a model forest, they must not buy 

 timber, because probably it would be badly grown, as most of 

 our woods over thirty-five years old were far too much thinned. 

 They should buy waste land, and make it an object-lesson to 

 show how to plant wastes with profit. If one got the State, after 

 endowing lectureships, etc., to buy a piece of waste land, suitable 

 for planting with a fair chance of profit, they must first have it 

 marked out and shelter-belts made, because in this wind-swept 

 land successful planting was very difficult. If there were large 

 woodlands, they would create shelter for themselves, but at 

 present a great part of the waste land of this country was above 

 the thousand feet contour line, and often difficult to plant in its 

 present naked condition. Until you got a first crop on lower 

 lands, you would often not be able to plant. No doubt the 

 landowners of Scotland would be willing to allow the students to 

 visit their forests. If they did not see model forestry, they would 



