CONFERENCE ON FORESTRY EDUCATION. 57 



an intellectual education simultaneously with practical work, was 

 the best education you could give a boy. It was undoubtedly 

 a practical subject ; and, as Ruskin said, when you had taught 

 a boy to take off a straight shaving you had taught him some- 

 thing all the lectures could not teach, the use of his own hands. 

 It was the same in forestry. They must teach him how to 

 work, and to use his own hands. The present system of allowing 

 a young forester to attend a six weeks' course at the university 

 simultaneously with his practical work was all that they required. 

 The agricultural professor of to-day was a very different person 

 from what he was thirty or forty years ago. The latter took it 

 for granted that the ordinary practical farmer knew nothing. 

 To-day, however, he was willing to learn from the farmer. The 

 lecturers of the colleges would have a very great deal to learn 

 from the practical foresters. As a matter of fact, were the young 

 foresters of to-day more enthusiastic for education than twenty 

 years ago ? He thought it was just the reverse. When they 

 made the road too easy, the enthusiasm, to a certain extent, 

 died. He believed that when they educated young men too 

 much, they gave them, to some extent, false ideas of their own 

 importance. He thought it would be a good thing, before 

 establishing a demonstration area, to try and arrange an easy and 

 cheap method for young foresters, and even for old ones, to get 

 on the Continent and see the sylvicultural operations that were 

 carried out on a large scale there ; and then apply that experience, 

 so far as applicable to this country, and no further. He believed 

 they ruined the woods by overthinning them. The forester him- 

 self, if he were honest, would tell them he had a very great deal 

 of his business to learn after he got into harness. He learned a 

 great deal from his own failures, though he took care to tell no 

 one of them, and he also took care not to repeat them. With 

 regard to estate managers, factors, and agents, he thought it 

 would do no harm to educate them a little more, and to educate 

 the landlords a little more. He thought the average forester in 

 this country was as intelligent, or more intelligent, than any 

 artizan who got equal remuneration. When lectureships and 

 professorships were worth going in for, they would require for 

 the young man a different class of training than for the estate 

 forester, because he was going to try to work out and investigate 

 certain diseases, and in order to do that thoroughly, he must 

 have a thorough laboratory training. The simplest method of a 



