RECLAMATION OF WASTE LAND. 449 



country be quite out of place — let alone that private land- 

 owners will prefer as heretofore to appoint their own local 

 men, whom they feel that they can trust, as their foresters, 

 no matter what their preparation for the service may have 

 been. And no one will be able to prevent, or be right even 

 in blaming, them. We want education badly, even in the 

 ranks of such men, as the evidence given before the Forestry 

 Committee made very plain. To state only one instance 

 of prevaiHng want of knowledge, the fact that an otherwise 

 evidently competent forester, who no doubt has proved a 

 valuable servant to his master, should not know the differ- 

 ence between sessile oak — which is what he ought to have 

 planted — and pedunculated oak — which is what he actually 

 did plant — very plainly demonstrates to what extent present 

 want of technical schooling is apt to affect our forestry — 

 which accordingly, as witness the evidence given b}^ Mr. 

 Pitcaithley, forester at Scone, " produces an article of 

 inferior quahty, that can only be used for certain purposes 

 as a kind of forestal timber, when, under other treatment, 

 it might excel any foreign timber and certainly could be 

 produced in greater bulk on less ground than that on which 

 we grow our inferior timber." It cannot be too often called 

 to mind that forestry is a national interest, as well as an 

 interest of landowning individuals. The care of their own 

 little forests will have to be left to individual landowners. 

 If these gentlemen should have forest enough to warrant 

 the appointment of qualified men of the stamp of the German 

 forster, or the French agent forestier, forestry would be all 

 the better for it. And if we were to start institutions Hke 

 the Ge.rn-\3.\\ forstschulen , authorised to confer a qualification, 

 probably their instruction would not go a-begging. What 

 strikes the eye more particularly in the German forest 

 service, however, is the very active part in the management 

 taken by the superior class of forest officers, from the 

 Oberforster upward, men of superior technical attainments, 

 and of good social standing, who really direct the entire 

 business. By a ciuious freak of Prussian organisation, not 

 a few of these higher forestal officials are taken from the 

 diplomatic service, where they have served as what we should 



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