IS BRITISH FORESTRY PROGRESSIVE ? 51 
‘has practical work to do with a smattering of it, he shakes his 
head, and remarks that “theory” is all very well, but give him 
experience. On estates the purely practical man is favoured, for 
several reasons. The principal one, however, is apparent when 
we consider what the duties of an estate forester are. Theo- 
retically, they are the management of woods and the superin- 
tendence of the staff employed therein. Practically, they are just 
what the proprietor considers most expedient for the economical 
working of the estate. If the woods are of small extent, other 
duties are often entrusted to the forester, such as attending to 
roads, fences, draining, and sundry other work peculiar to an 
estate, according as its character and other circumstances render 
a grouping together of certain duties advisable. A knowledge of 
scientific forestry is consequently considered by most proprietors 
a superfluity, and although I should not like to say that the 
possession of it was a disadvantage to a candidate for an appoint- 
ment, I don’t think it would be likely to help him very much. 
The class of men wanted on the majority of estates nowadays are 
not specialists, but jacks-of-all-trades, who can turn their hands to 
anything and turn up their noses at nothing. If a young forester, 
after studying forestry and the allied sciences, is willing to begin 
work on this understanding, and put his science in his pocket till 
it is asked for, all well and good. But if, on the contrary, he 
puts on an air of superiority, substitutes scientific language for 
his mother-tongue, and falls into that lamentable condition 
peculiar to the immortal Jack Jones, it would have been better 
for him to have remained as Nature intended him to be, Any- 
one acquainted with the average estate labourer in the south of 
England will know that any attempt to alter his methods of taking 
that gentle exercise which he euphemistically terms ‘ work,” or 
to introduce new tools, is simply labour in vain, and a little tact 
and judgment are of more use than a great deal of science. 
Under present conditions, it is only the young forester, who 
has a genuine affection for his profession, and to whom the 
receipt of so much per annum is not the sum total of his 
ambition, that can benefit by a scientific education. Every bond- 
fide forester is more or less a naturalist, and beyond the mere 
stock of facts furnished by a study of such subjects as botany, 
chemistry, zoology, etc., it will enable him to make accurate 
observations—an advantage which needs no recommendation. 
Bat in the present condition of British forestry, the number of 
