FORESTRY EDUCATION : ITS IMPORTANCE AND REQUIREMENTS. 37 



twenty or more of these ingenious and beautiful nests hanging ' 

 to the branches of a tree A few years ago a forest officer 

 endowed with keen powers of observation discovered the origin 

 of many, up to then, unexplained fires in parts of the Assam 

 forests. A fire backed by a high wind would reach a broad 

 boundary line, which had been carefully cleared during the cold 

 weather, and would be there checked and beaten out. Yet it 

 was often found that fires started, as if by themselves, in parts 

 of the forest beyond, without having crossed the trace. The 

 following simple explanation was discovered. Colonies of this 

 little weaver bird built their nests in small trees situated on the 

 outer edge of the forest near the boundary lines or fire traces. 

 These nests were tenantless in the hot weather season. As a 

 fire came up with a strong wind behind it, the dried grass nests 

 caught fire, the few strands by which they were attached to the 

 trees were burned through at once, and the burning nests, acting 

 as so many fireballs, were swept by the wind many hundred 

 yards away into the forest on the far side of the carefully swept 

 fire line, thus starting fresh fires. It is now the duty of the men 

 who clear the fire lines in the cold weather season, to search for 

 all adjacent weaver bird-nests and cut them down and burn 

 them. 



One more illustration of a forest officer's work and I have 

 done. He will find almost in whatever country and clime he 

 may serve in, that he will, sooner or later, be faced with planting 

 problems, with knotty points connected with the thinnings of his 

 woods, and with still knottier ones in connection with the extrac- 

 tion of the timber. Now the forester must be able to grapple with 

 all these, and he will only be able to do so efficiently in proportion 

 as he has been trained to his work, and in proportion Men 

 entendu as he has kept himself au fait with forest literature and 

 the accepted opinions of the men of the day on forest subjects. 

 Nowhere, perhaps, in the world have men had to face knottier 

 problems connected with planting than in India. Here in 

 Scotland I may be told there are worse ones. Well, picture to 

 yourself a southern aspect in India exposed to the full sun of a 

 long hot weather in a dry arid country, the soil composed of 

 part rock, part sand, the surface sparsely covered here and there 

 with a spiny growth of shrubs, which no known animal on the 

 surface of the earth can grapple with, save the goat and camel; 

 the area is exposed to constant denudation from landslips which 



