io Science and Teaching of Forestry. 



few, but that there are any candidates for an examination, which is, as of 

 course it should be, both theoretical and practical. 



The Science and Art Department, holding as they do examinations in 

 agriculture, have declined to add forestry to their list of subjects ; and it 

 may well be doubted whether any examination scheme would be of any use 

 in the absence of proper arrangements for teaching. 



Since I lectured on forestry here in 1876, taking as my text-book a trans- 

 lation, published in India, of Professor Bagneris' excellent" Manuel de Sylvi- 

 culture," which was in your library, public opinion in this country has been 

 a good deal directed to the establishment of a forest school, not only for 

 the Indian department, the candidates for which are now trained, at a con- 

 siderable expense and in a foreign language, at Nancy, but also for our own 

 woodlands at home and the vast forests in Canada, Australia, New Zealand 

 and the Cape. These colonies now are reduced to borrowing forest officers 

 from India, where they cannot be safely spared. 



For this reviving interest we are mainly indebted to the efforts of the 

 Rev. J. Croumbie Brown, of Haddington, to whose writings I am much 

 indebted, and to the proprietors of our excellent Journal of Forestry, which 

 was started in May, 1877. 



The "Rev. Dr. Brown has ably advocated the establishment of a forest- 

 school at Edinburgh, in connection with the University and Arboretum. 

 Mr. Mackenzie, superintendent of Epping Forest, urges the establishment 

 of such a school in connection with the 6,000 acres of forest land in Essex 

 now under the control of the Corporation of London. M. Boppe, in the 

 report from which I have previously quoted, recommends the endowment of 

 professorships of Forest Economy and Sylviculture at Edinburgh, and at the 

 Eoyal Indian Engineering College at Cooper's-hill. 



As to these various schemes I would remark that whilst Edinburgh offers 

 great facilities for the study of subsidiary sciences, languages and other 

 subjects, in addition to that most valuable adjunct, the Arboretum, the 

 drawback to it as the seat of a State school of forestry is the absence of 

 any neighbouring state forest where scientific and systematic working has 

 been carried out for any length of time and can be assured for teaching pur- 

 poses in the future. Epping Forest is, like many of the school forests of 

 the continent, in close proximity to the capital. It presents much variety 

 of hardwood forest in a small area ; but its future management is hampered 

 by two conditions which render it probably unfit for an educational forest : 

 1st, the rights of the commoners, who have ruined the forest by pollarding 

 in the past and who must seriously injure it by pasturage in the future ; 

 and 2ndly, the Act of Parliament which enacts that it is to be main- 

 tained only for recreation and not worked as a source of profit. The trees 

 cannot, therefore, be felled when mature; no enclosures are allowed for 

 any purpose, and, though there are large areas where planting may be most 

 advantageously carried out, there can be nothing like scientific forest ad- 

 ministration in connection with it. Windsor Park similarly affords but 

 partial forest instruction, the conservation of the trees being the main object, 

 and not their administration as a source of profit. The New Forest has 

 been so ruined by the unrestricted exercise of the rights of common, that, 

 according to M. Boppe's report, 49,000 acres will before very long be 

 nothing but a worthless barren heath, whilst at least 50 years must elapse 

 before the 14,000 acres reserved about 20 years ago can be so far restored 

 as to be felled systematically as a source of revenue. In M. Boppe's words 

 " it will not be here that a professor of sylviculture, desirous of teaching 

 his science, will choose LQ pitch his tent." 



