26 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
it what he conceived to be the congenial topic of Coast Erosion. 
He had got the length, thanks perhaps to the entente cordiale, 
of hearing of an “Administration des Eaux et Forets,’ and was 
therefore assured that these two things, taken together, would 
spontaneously furnish employment to the troublesome unemployed 
on land or on water—fresh or salt. This was at least a departure 
betokening the zeal so conspicuously absent in the two or three 
departments really responsible, whose normal state of mind is 
that in Sylviculture, as with the rest, private initiative and 
enterprise are amply sufficient to meet any exigency. The 
doctrine of /azssez faire in all its purity remains at the Treasury, 
the nearest approach to anything sacred. Yet it is plain enough, 
apart from any comparison so odious as one between the condi- 
tion of our own and that of Continental forests, that the simple 
individualism which can cope more or less with agricultural 
operations begun, continued, and ended in too days, is 
calculated unreservedly to fail in a sylvicultural project extend- 
ing continuously over too years. It is sufficiently clear that 
this Government, like its predecessors, approaches the whole 
subject either with indifference or from the wrong point of 
view. 
On account of recent movements, proposals, and tendencies, a 
representative body of sylviculturists recently interviewed the 
Chancellor of the Exchequer to enforce the need for definite 
action on the lines of the 1902 Report, and a sufficient précis 
of these proceedings was published. As regards provision for 
sylvicultural training, it was indicated by the deputation that 
existing lectureships, some of which should be chairs of forestry, 
must be properly equipped with, for example, experimental 
plots or a forest garden, and, when practicable, with a demonstra- 
tion forest, all under the control of the lecturer, as has been 
happily accomplished through the transference of the manage- 
ment of a Crown woodland to the Durham College. A moderate 
provision of this kind for the three kingdoms and Wales might 
work out roughly at £50,000. 
Beyond this substantial instalment for local needs, we require 
to complete the system—three forest schools, both for home and 
imperial policy. Avondale, under its Irish Board, should suit 
Ireland admirably. The Forest of Dean could be advantageously 
transferred to the directorship of an English school. A forest 
has to be bought for Scotland and the north of England. For 
