REPORT ON A VISIT TO SCOTTISH AND ENGLISH FORESTS. 209 
of moor and waste land which cover one-third of the Highlands, we 
should consider there was a sufficient reason for the formation of 
such a school. The question, however, must be studied on broader 
grounds. 
Considering the present depressed state of agriculture all over 
Europe, it becomes more and more necessary to endeavour to draw 
the greatest possible advantage from the land, and, by properly 
adapting a different vegetation to different soils, to seek to obtain, 
through the medium of the enormous capital which the present 
generation can command, the maximum production from a minimum 
area. It is thus that the forests are called upon to play an impor- 
tant part in the immediate future, and the farmer will henceforth 
find a powerful auxiliary in the forester. 
After making every allowance for the great fertility of the soil in 
Great Britain, we feel certain that in many districts more than one 
of the forests which were cleared some time back would now be 
jealously preserved by the same proprietors who formerly cut them 
down to satisfy their pressing wants. 
It must also be borne in mind that the British Empire is not 
confined to Great Britain and Ireland, and that, by reason of her 
immense possessions, England is perhaps, of all nations in the 
world, the one most richly endowed with valuable timber forests. 
It is by hundreds of millions of acres that we may reckon the forests 
of Canada, India, Australia, New Zealand, and Cape Colony, not to 
speak of those in the West Indies and Borneo.! All these natural 
sources of wealth are worked by British enterprise and British 
capital ; and, consequent on the present wonderful development of 
commerce throughout the globe, it is a matter of importance to 
every civilised nation that this vast accumulation of forest riches 
should not fall into the hands of ignorant persons, or be squandered 
away regardless of the future. 
For these reasons the establishment of a Forest School in England 
becomes a matter of primary importance. 
Necessity for a Reserved Forest.—The science of forestry is, how- 
ever, a science of observation, based upon facts which must be 
studied both from a practical and theoretical point of view. It is 
therefore absolutely necessary that a Forest School should have 
attached to it a forest which has for some time past been under 
scientific management, serving, so to speak, as a natural laboratory 
1 The total extent of the forests in the British possessions is estimated at 
340,000,000 acres. 
