222 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
the forests, and finally a knowledge of these minor products themselves, have 
been quite beyond the power of the heavily worked executive officer to grapple 
with. No one but the specialist, the Forest Officer who, having followed the 
ordinary educational course of his brother officers, has subsequently made a 
speciality of a particular branch of these forest sciences, can hope to obtain, 
after perhaps years of patient observation, investigation and experiments, such 
an acquaintance with his subject as to make his researches available from a 
practical and economic point of view to the Executive Officer. Owing to the 
recent enlightened action of the Government of India, the Department will now 
have four officers each devoting himself to one of these special branches, and 
we foresee in the near future, and it may be written without hesitation or fear 
that the conviction will be found unjustifiable, that such an advance will be 
made in our knowledge of these subjects, both in economic and scientific 
directions, as will justify to the hilt the action of Government and the previous 
convictions of the Department as to the necessity of the present departure. 
We feel sure that we are but voicing the sentiments of the Service when we 
tender to the Government of India our sincere acknowledgments for one of 
the most important economic and scientific departures which has been made 
since the creation of the Forest Department, and we have every confidence 
that the results achieved will fully justify the far-seeing statesmanship which 
has inaugurated the new policy. 
As regards the training of probationers, there are not wanting 
some who, with a solid foundation of common-sense, suggest that 
the special training of Indian Forest Officers can perhaps in 
future best be given at Dehra Din; and there are many others 
who think that the late Coopers Hill and the present Oxford 
training neither was, nor is, what is wanted. These are, of 
course, aS one can quite well understand, views which do not 
commend themselves to Dr Schlich, even although everyone may 
recognise the good work he has done for twenty years at Coopers 
Hill and is still engaged in at Oxford. But with the preparatory 
technical instruction (mainly in Continental forestry, or its direct 
offshoot) now obtainable at various university and collegiate 
centres, it should be easy to obtain men for the Indian and 
Colonial Forest Services by open competition in the four main 
branches of Forestry and the chief Cognate Sciences, and then 
give them one year’s special and chiefly practical training. 
A long tour (April to July) in Southern and Eastern France 
(Alpes Maritimes, Gascony and the Pyrenees, and the Vosges), 
in Wurtemberg and Baden (the Black Forest), in Bavaria (the 
Bavarian Alps and the forests on the plateaux and plains), and in 
Switzerland, these being the parts of Southern and Central Europe 
which are undoubtedly by far the most instructive to the Indian 
forester, might be followed by a three months’ course of lectures 
