EXAMPLE PLOTS OR FOREST GARDENS. 319 
often be undertaken; and when time for such excursions is avail- 
able, the sylviculturist has to compete with other lecturers—the 
botanist, the geologist, the entomologist, the surveyor, the engi- 
neer, the agriculturist—for their attendance. Hence it is evident 
that unless the Forest Garden be “close at hand ” effective prac- 
tical instruction in elementary forest work cannot be given. 
If a Demonstration Forest were “close at hand” there would 
evidently be no need to provide a Forest Garden; for in the 
former would be seen all that the latter could show, and a great 
deal more in addition. But there is no hope that a large forest 
area could be established in the immediate vicinity of any of the 
present teaching centres, and hence arises the necessity for each 
such centre possessing its own Forest Garden, in which the lectures 
given can receive due practical illustration up to a certain point 
in the development of a forest crop. If the Forest Garden is 
not near enough to the lecture-room to serve this purpose, it 
would be sheer waste of money to establish it; for if a visit 
to it involves a prolonged absence from headquarters, . it 
would probably be almost as easy to go to the Demonstration 
Forest, where, as I have said, much more could be seen. The 
Forest Garden at Giessen is about two miles from the university, 
and the Garden at Oxford lies at a distance of about 2} miles 
from the centre of the university. 
I am not, of course, unaware of the high cost ot land in the 
immediate vicinity of a town, and I do not expect a Forest 
Garden of 100 to 200 acres at the door of my lecture-room; but I 
desire to urge that the Gardens should be located as.near as 
possible to the lecture-rooms, no attempt being made to adapt 
one such Garden to use by two or more teaching centres. And 
I may add that I would rather content myself with an area one 
twentieth (or even less as a temporary provision) the size of that 
recommended by the Committee, taking my chance of future 
extension, than accept the larger Garden situated at a distance 
which would render it very much less useful to me. 
