322 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
ment in giving effect to the scheme through the County Councils. 
The grades to be provided for comprise working apprentices, 
working foresters, foreman foresters, head foresters, inspectors of 
forestry. 
It should, I contend, be the aim of all who are engaged in 
afforestation to create a class of apprentices, instead of merely 
taking on boys to drift into the lot of common labourers. If we 
are to make the planting of trees a skilled calling, the apprentices 
must be properly taught, just in the same way as apprentices to 
plumbers or carpenters. But as the planting operations are 
carried on for the most part in remote country districts, the 
working apprentices will be sons of agricultural labourers and 
shepherds, who cannot afford to send their boys to a central 
technical school, and some local provision should be made for 
them. 
Since I gave evidence before the Departmental Committee, I 
have had opportunities of considering, in the light of experience, 
the difficult problem of obtaining suitable theoretical instruction 
for apprentices to working foresters. There is not, so far as I 
can see, any one available to impart instruction except the 
master of the nearest elementary school; but there does not 
appear to be any good reason why he should not, if supplied 
with proper text-books, be capable of guiding the student in 
acquiring elementary knowledge of botany, leaving the head 
forester under whom the apprentice is serving to give the 
necessary practical illustrations. A large majority of apprentices 
will not go beyond this, and they will form the rank and file of 
working foresters. For promising students there should be 
scholarships available in the nearest School of Forestry, under the 
direction of the County Councils, and these students would work 
their way to a higher grade. The head foresters and inspectors 
of forestry must, as a matter of course, be trained in the forestry 
department attached to universities, and they should be required 
to possess diplomas to show that they have thoroughly studied 
their subject, and have acquired a practical as well as theoretical 
knowledge of the best home and foreign practice. 
I am, your obedient Servant, 
J. Parry. 
Liverpool Corporation Water-Works, 
Municipal Offices, Liverpool. 
