THE PROPOSED SCHOOL OF FORESTRV. 73 



service. Tliis was in 1866. I took the greatest possible pains 

 in this business, was favoured by circumstances, and was most 

 fortunate in my selection. What I wanted were men as young 

 as possible, who had successfully passed the prescribed course of 

 professional training similar to that which I have just described 

 to you. It thus happened that they were not Prussians. Dr 

 Schlich, who succeeded me as Inspector-General of Forests when 

 I left India in 1883, was a native of Hesse Darmstadt; and Mr 

 Ribbentrop, who is now acting in the same appointment while 

 Dr Schlich is employed at Cooper's Hill in starting the Forest 

 School, at which, as you are aware, candidates for the Indian 

 Forest Department are now educated, was a native of the former 

 kingdom of Hanover, which in 1866 had just been annexed to 

 Prussia. The fact that the Government of India have selected 

 these two men for the important appointments which they now 

 hold, and that for these appointments they have been preferred to 

 many forest officers in India of great ability and experience, shows, 

 that the thorough professional training which Dr Schlich and 

 Mr Ribbentrop had received in their own country, had been most 

 useful to them in India, and that its value has been fully recog- 

 nised by Government. It is, as you may readily imagine, a source 

 of great satisfaction to state these facts to you, and I venture to 

 hope, that some day it will be carefully considered, whether those 

 Indian forest officei-s, who are destined for the highest appoint 

 ments in that country, ought not to receive a professional educa- 

 tion as thorough as the candidates destined for the superior staff 

 of the Prussian forest service. The time allotted to their studies 

 at Cooper's Hill is two years, while the time allotted to their pro- 

 fessional studies under former arrangements on the Continent of 

 Europe was two years and eight months only. The time was 

 not fixed so short because that was considei-ed as sufficient, but 

 because it was and is not, I believe, at present deemed possible 

 to assign a longer period or to organise the whole business in a 

 different manner. The professional education of forest officers in 

 Germany has not always been as elaborate and as prolonged as it is 

 at present. In every country these are matters of gradual growth. 

 But good and really effective forest management is of vital 

 importance for the welfare of the people of India. We, all of us, 

 who had anything to do with the growth of forestry in that country, 

 started with the provision of a lasting and, if possible, steadily- 

 increasing sui)ply of timber, wood, bark, and other forest produce 



