REPORT OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON FORESTRY. 151 
forestry, that, except in India, we have taken no kind of active 
interest in the subject ; although we own more forests in the world 
than any other race, we are at present, except in the most piece- 
meal fashion, absolutely washing our hands of the whole business.” 
—‘ Do you consider that if we had had a school of forestry in 
England, we should have been able to send foresters to Cyprus, 
and that by this time the replanting of Cyprus, which has been 
begun by the Government, would have been further advanced than 
it has been?” “It is difficult to say, because the gentlemen who 
have taken the work in hand have done their best.” —‘ You think 
there would be no practical difficulty in making the school available 
both for British and colonial sylviculture?” ‘I think not, because 
there is no great mystery in sylviculture, but what you want is 
some one who has a sufficient amount of practical and scientific 
knowledge behind him to be able to say to a colony, ‘ You must not 
cut down the forest along that ridge, because if you do, you will 
dry up the water there and let in the hot wind.’ The scientific 
forester sees things which other kinds of men do not see. And 
these matters are not scientific theories; they are based upon 
common sense, and consequently can be pointed out and explained 
in such a way to the colonial residents that they will agree when the 
thing is once explained to them. The colonists do not do these 
things out of innate wickedness, but because the thing has not been 
pointed out to them ; they have often not been long resident in the 
country, and they do not know its local conditions ; and when they 
find, as they have done in Natal, that the destruction of the forest 
alters the physical conditions of the colony, they want to know why 
they have not some one to teach them ; they want persons who will 
advise them. The Government of South Australia got their forest 
officer from Canada (that is an instance of the condition to which 
the colonists have been reduced) to show them what to do.”— 
“ Suppose a school of forestry were established in England, what 
would you say would be the best locality to establish a school for 
sylviculture?” “It is rather difficult to say.”—‘“ Should you say 
Kew?” ‘There are some advantages at Kew; there is a great 
store of information there ; but there is not a scrap of English 
woodland there.”—“ It is near Windsor?” “It is; but Lam not 
sufficiently a practical forester myself to say how far the woods at 
Windsor would give the instruction needed. I should be rather 
disposed to place the school somewhere near the metropolis, because 
I am strongly inclined to think that the education of forest students 
