30 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



consideration in this country. Too great stress cannot be laid 

 on what are after all actual facts. The excellent and remunera- 

 tive results of forestry in Europe, which we also wish to arrive 

 at in the British Isles, are solely the result of the study of 

 higher forestry both in the woods and in the laboratory. 

 Practical foresters can only be successful in proportion to the 

 knowledge they themselves possess, or which is imparted to them 

 by those who know. We can learn from other countries a great 

 deal, but the application of what we learn must depend on 

 ourselves and must be carried out by ourselves. 



We have now seen what the continental forestry colleges 

 consider the essentials to the proper tuition of forestry as a 

 science, and have shown how the student is gradually led, not 

 only to assimilate the theoretical portions of the study in the 

 lecture room, but to take with him what he has absorbed there 

 and apply it practically in the woods. We have seen that these 

 practical object-lessons must begin with the student's first 

 lectures, that he must be taken into the woods at the beginning, 

 and be shown step by step that what he is being told in the 

 lecture room is not so much matter to be studied for an 

 examination, and to be subsequently forgotten when his text- 

 books and note-books are thrown aside after the " pass " has 

 been gained. It has been said of the forester that he is always 

 at school, from the moment he first enters the lecture room to 

 commence his first course to the end of his life. And those 

 of us who are foresters know this to be true. Our text-books 

 and lecture notes remain our trusted friends to the end, and as 

 we grow older and have had a more extensive practice and 

 experience in forestry, we grow more diffident about expressing 

 definite opinions and laying down the law on the subject of the 

 life-histories of our friends the trees. For the tree is very much 

 like the human being. He has his wants and requirements, his 

 fancies for particular aspects and localities, for certain soils and 

 degrees of light, moisture, heat and shade. All these the 

 forester must know and study, and even then his fastidious 

 friend will often discover something he dislikes, and will refuse 

 to grow. The forester has to set to work to find out what this 

 something is, and meanwhile all he has done is a failure. A 

 failure that is unless he is a thoroughly trained scientific man. 

 As such he will turn his failures to account, for he will place them 

 on record so that he and others like him may set to work to get at 



