oD4 REPORT OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON FORESTRY. 
students there, because there are a great many things for them to 
see, but they could not see everything. I am now speaking of 
the pupils I am directly interested in training for the Indian 
service ; they could not see everything in Scotland.”—-“ M. Boppe 
expressed an unfavourable opinion of the management of the 
woodlands in Scotland, and said that they were not managed 
upon scientific principles; have you any knowledge of their 
management in those parts?” “I spent a fortnight there last 
year; I went into some of the Highland forests, and came away 
with a very high respect for some of the wood-managers I saw 
there. If the forests are not in every respect managed upon so 
perfect a system as gentlemen accustomed to look at it from a 
different point of view and under different considerations might 
think desirable, the reason generally was that the forester had to 
give way to other considerations than those of merely scientific 
cultivation. J came across certain men who knew very well how 
to manage forests, and whenever I criticised and said I would not 
have managed a wood in the way it was actually done, I always 
found that they knew how and where the mistake was; but they 
were also invariably able to give the explanation that it was the 
result of different considerations upon the mind of the owner. 
At present the foresters have to acquire their knowledge by a 
very laborious, and to the owners of the land a very costly, pro- 
cess; that is to say, by experience spread over a large period of 
years ; whereas if we had a suitable forest school we could, by 
gathering the experience gained in various parts of the country 
together, teach them in a couple of years what, perhaps, it takes 
men of their class twenty years to acquire by personal observa- 
tion. That is the principal advantage of a forest school; that it 
enables us to teach a young man in a limited space of time what 
he may otherwise spend half his lifetime in finding out.”— 
“ During which time he may make a number of expensive 
mistakes?” ‘* Precisely so.”—‘“ In your opinion are Scottish 
forests sufficiently well managed to make them available for the 
instruction of those gentlemen?” ‘As they stand now they are 
not.”——“‘Then why do you recommend they should go there?” 
‘“T can show my men many points there; I can show them how 
in the most admirable manner to plant forests ; and they probably 
would see that better in Scotland than elsewhere; they might go 
a long way on the Continent before they would see planting so 
excellent as they would see in Scotland.” —-‘‘Then what is the 
