42 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



forests, Victoria, for 191 1 (page 17), he says:— "It (camphor) 

 is suited to the warm, moist valleys of the north-east of Victoria." 

 Camphor is required in the manufacture of explosives. Nearly 

 all the present camphor forests are in Japan and Formosa, and 

 a few years ago the Japanese nearly established a camphor 

 monopoly. But other countries are now planting camphor. 

 Australia should not only make plantations of camphor, but 

 get trees planted here and there in glades in the fire-protected 

 forests, whence later they can spread self-sown. Australia 

 should surely be independent of foreign countries for its 

 camphor. 



His Excellency the Governor-General of Australia (the only 

 English statesman who has more than a local knowledge of 

 forestry) recently attended a conference on the question of forest 

 education in Australia. And the question of forest education in 

 Australia came up at one of the meetings of the botany section 

 of the British Association. It is a want which must be supplied, 

 sooner or later, because there are wide differences, both as 

 regards theory and practice, between forestry in the sub-tropics, 

 and forestry in either the tropics or in the cold temperate 

 countries of Europe and North America. It is true that we 

 have extra-tropical forest schools at Vallombrosa in Italy, at 

 Madrid in Spain, the beginnings of a forest school in Portugal, 

 and a marvellously complete system of forest education in Japan. 

 But none of these countries quite represent Australian conditions, 

 although Spain comes nearest to it. 



The Madrid forest school, which I visited recently, I found 

 surprisingly well equipped and ably conducted. Although 

 Spanish is the easiest language in the world for an Englishman 

 to learn, the language difficulty is a real one, and I doubt if 

 many Australian forest students will ever go to Spain for their 

 forest training. 



When the South African forest school was established in 1905, 

 it was hoped that a certain number of students of extra-tropical 

 forestry might be attracted from Australia ; but this did not 

 happen, and it was soon found that the South African forest 

 service was not in itself large enough to support a first-rate 

 forest school. The men of the upper grades of the South 

 African forest service now get their training as Rhodes' scholars 

 at Oxford ; but this, at best, is a temporary arrangement with 

 obvious disadvantages. If a good federal school of extra- 



