FORESTRY EDUCATION : ITS IMPORTANCE AND REQUIREMENTS. 41 



the University, in the near future, with a scheme for the 

 provision of adequate space for our forestry exhibits. 



3. The Forest Garden a fid Demonstration Woods. So far as 

 woods of a high educational value go, Edinburgh is undoubtedly 

 better situated than any other forestry centre, out of Scotland, in 

 the British Isles. There are woods in Scotland, many of them 

 known by repute, in which the student on his practical courses 

 can learn a great deal. In fact, supplemented with some object 

 lessons on the Continent, we may say that this part of the 

 students' practical work can be fully arranged for. We have 

 not had, however, in the past, either a forest garden or a series 

 of forest demonstration woods similar to those I have described 

 at Tharandt. We have not had areas to which the students 

 can be taken constantly, during the theoretical portion of the 

 training, so that this essential portion of the practical course 

 can go hand in hand with the class work. 



Now, students working for a forestry degree cannot be trained 

 without the provision of such an area. Forestry, in the opinion 

 of all practical foresters, cannot be taught at all without such an 

 area. My predecessor made great efforts to obtain such an 

 area. Professor Bayley Balfour placed the resources of the 

 Botanical Garden with its very useful arboretum at his disposal. 

 It will ever form, I trust, a most useful aid to our training, but 

 Professor Bayley Balfour would not care to see twenty students 

 trenching one of the banks of his beautiful gardens or preparing 

 nursery beds on a lawn. And yet a forestry student must go 

 through this practical work, or how is he to know whether the 

 work is done well or ill when he has charge of woods in 

 the future ? Similarly we want to fell trees. Good-natured 

 and public-spirited as our neighbouring proprietors of woods 

 are, we can hardly expect to be constantly received with open 

 arms, when our desire is to fell and measure up sample trees or 

 show the students how to thin an area. For our higher training 

 in some of these directions, I shall trust to avail myself of the 

 many and generous offers I have received, to bring my students 

 and make thinnings in woods which require such work done in 

 them silviculturally ; but for the practical work which must go 

 hand in hand with the lectures, it is essential that we should 

 have an area in the vicinity of the University under our own 

 direct management, where we can make a good nursery in which 

 generations of students will, in their day, prepare beds, sow, 



