130 TRANSACTIONS OF ROVAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



versed in the principles of scientific silviculture and able to 

 apply them, with the discretion born of experience, to each 

 particular case with which he is called upon to deal. He 

 cannot be a specialist in all the sciences allied to forestry, but 

 he must be sufficiently at home in each of them to recognise 

 when he requires its help and to know where and how such 

 help is to be got; and he must keep sufficiently abreast of each 

 to utilise its fresh discoveries. This is work for a man of first- 

 class intellect and high scientific training. 



11. Existing Supply of Fores fers. — The working foresters of 

 Scotland at the present time are, taken as a whole, a remarkably 

 intelligent and competent body of men. They have had to 

 work in the face of great difficulties, having seldom had the 

 education necessary for the very responsible position thrust 

 upon them, nor received, except hi rare cases, much guidance 

 from their employers or their employers' agents. In the 

 practical work of a woodman the best of the Scots foresters are 

 hard to beat. They fail in work where a wider experience is 

 required. They are not, for instance, usually competent to 

 devise the systematic working-plans which are essential to 

 profitable forestry, to classify the soils in their woods, to form 

 an opinion as to the amount of timber their woodlands ought 

 to carry, or to estimate the probable annual increment- Nor,, 

 except in rare instances, are they able to advise on the thinning 

 and pruning of young plantations, nor on questions of forest 

 engineering or transport, on which the profit obtainable from 

 the crop often largely depends. No one realises more clearly 

 than the best of the working foresters themselves the need of 

 scientific guidance in such matters. 



The expert of the forest-officer class is already not wholly 

 unknown in Scots woods, and the demand for his services is 

 increasing. The forestry lecturers have, in the limited leisure 

 at their disjiosal, been ungrudging in their assistance to private 

 proprietors. The ideal expert, however, — the man who combines 

 the theory of silviculture with experience in the actual manage- 

 ment of Scots woods — scarcely exists at present. 



12. General Conditions and Needs of tlie Present Time. — There 

 are no .State forests in Scotland and no Crown forest except the 

 estate recently i)urchased at Inverliever, of which only about 

 360 acres have yet been planted. There are about 850,000 

 acres of private woods (see 25). None of these private woods 



