CONTINENTAL NOTES — FRANCE. 67 



officers, but a great deal more could surely be done. In the first 

 place, as things are at present, these advisory officers are given a 

 difficult — even, sometimes, an invidious — task, for they are 

 called in to prescribe for woods they have not previously known, 

 and which they will probably not see again, and they seem to be 

 situated as would be a doctor who has never seen his patient 

 before, and is required to cure that patient with one prescription 

 after one visit. Now the best forester in the world could not be 

 certain of giving absolutely sure advice in such circumstances. 

 The adviser needs to be permitted to watch his proposals in 

 action for a certain period — say five years — in order that he 

 may learn the local conditions, which are apt to vary greatly, 

 A visit or two a year would be sufficient to show him how 

 things were working out. It would probably be best to charge 

 no fee for this, but the adviser should most decidedly be given 

 the chance, not only to see whether the local conditions made 

 it advisable for him to alter in any particular his original 

 proposals, but also to see whether those proposals were under- 

 stood in their execution. The necessity is not always fully 

 realised of adhering strictly and steadily, and very patiently and 

 persistently, to the prescriptions of a carefully thought-out 

 scheme, if that scheme is to have a fair chance. Without this 

 the advice will, it seems likely, lose more than half the value 

 which it might have. In France the idea of assistance from 

 State officers is not new — it is even, more or less unofficially, 

 in practice. They have also one other advantage there that 

 unfortunately cannot at once apply here — they have the example 

 of the State forests. One hopes that some day there may also 

 be State forests in the British Isles, and we may be perfectly 

 sure, from the experience of other countries, that the true policy 

 is to entrust to one energetic and wide-minded person (and not 

 to a Board) the work of building up a Forest Department. 

 Such a Department would go from strength to strength, and we 

 should insensibly find ourselves making a practice of com- 

 municating with its officers. Thus — and, one is inclined to think, 

 not otherwise — will forestry flourish, for the necessary persistence 

 ■is perhaps only to be certainly attained in a State service. 



XI. It may happen that members of our Society sometimes 

 travel to Switzerland by way of Dijon and Lausanne. If so, 

 and they would care to see the finest silver firs in France — 

 perhaps in Europe — they might stop on the way and visit the 



