TRAINING IN SYLVICULTURE. 27 
this the buyer should be able to draw on £100,000, so as to 
have the option of buying a whole estate, parts of which could 
perhaps be resold. No doubt 10,000 to 20,000 acres can be got 
for less than £ 100,000, for two well-wooded estates, of from 30,000 
to 40,000 acres each, of which large portions could have been 
properly afforested, and the more valuable portions resold, have 
recently changed hands in Ross and Sutherland. 
The Government should further be prepared for an expenditure 
for some years of several thousand pounds for equipment, all 
outlays being amply repaid eventually out of forest revenue. 
Why, it may be said, should the State find the whole cost for 
this one branch of technical education? It is because these 
forest schools, chairs, and lectureships are preparatory steps to 
enable the State to undertake effectively the repopulation of 
deserted landward districts. Private owners can afford to do 
but little for education; it will take them all their time, even 
with the aid of trained foresters, to put their own woods in order. 
Moreover, State training in sylviculture does not aim merely at 
renovating British woodlands, but at enabling the State to double 
and triple their area, and to lay the foundation of most valuable 
home industries—lost for lack of the administrative faculty and 
of the element of continuous good management in the growth of 
the necessary raw material. 
It is to provide, further, British officers and foresters for the 
empire at large, whose first step as students, if they now desire 
to acquire knowledge, is to leave their own country, where they 
can learn nothing by object-lessons. 
It is, in fact, not through individual but through State 
initiative that sylvicultural training is to be established, and 
adequate object-lessons placed before the eyes of a race that 
remains ignorant of the most elementary principles of sylvi- 
culture. And thus it is that a great branch of rural economy, 
the feeder of many industries, placed on a footing of common- 
sense and prudence, will become capable of natural expansion 
and of effecting wide-reaching social and economic results. 
