THE EDUCATION OF FORESTERS. 



levelling and surveying, road-making, and the formation 

 and management of tree nurseries. The home classes 

 might include entomology as far, at least, as injurious 

 forest insects are concerned, bird and animal life in the 

 woodlands, chemistry, geology, book-keeping, plan-drawing, 

 and forest botany. Previous to entering the State forests 

 it is expected, as before stated, that each pupil has received 

 a fair education, which, with his three years' training 

 on an estate where forestry is intelligently carried out, 

 and three years under the Crown, should render him 

 fully competent to undertake the duties of head forester 

 when opportunity occurs. 



During their stay in the State woods each pupil should 

 receive a weekly wage of 25s., with use of rooms and free 

 attendance at evening and other classes. 



For purely technical purposes the plantations, as before 

 stated, will not have arrived at their greatest value till 

 after twenty years, but for the first ten years the pupils 

 may receive much benefit from visits to the older Crown 

 and other woods where the felling and converting of 

 heavy timber is in operation. 



By such a system of procedure our foresters will be 

 enabled to gain a thorough practical knowledge of wood- 

 land work generally at no appreciable cost, the State at 

 the same time receiving valuable aid from the students 

 at a small outlay per annum. The employment in the 

 past on not a few estates in this country of the carpenter, 

 gardener or farm bailifi in the management of woodlands 

 is to be deprecated, and has been attended financially 

 with very unsatisfactory results. At the few existing 

 centres of forestry teaching in this country the most 

 serious drawback has been the want of woodlands, 

 but with the State as owners, practical instruction 

 would, to a great extent, replace the theoretical and book- 

 work, and do away with the necessity of students, after 

 having attended their course of lectures, applying to the 

 officials of our public parks in order to learn the names 

 of our forest trees and to what the various timbers are 

 applied. 



Regarding the most desirable places to establish the 



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