616 



SCHOOLS OF FORESTRY. 



It is interesting to study by what phases the course of instruction has passed from 

 the origin of this school to 1873. They have been as follows : 



Numler of hours devoted to instruction. 



A fact is developed by this table which is noticed in many other institutions, that 

 the two years' course had become crowded by the unavoidable development of new 

 studies, so that before the enlargement to five semesters, the recitations and exercises 

 occupied 6.2 hours each day, besides the time given to study. This requirement was 

 too much, and could not fail, if continued, to bring lassitude and inattention. The 

 course of law was introduced in 1844, and that of forest constructions in 1873. Pro- 

 fessor Mathieu, of Nancy (from whose article in the Revue dea Eaux et Forets 1874, 

 p. 155 the above table is derived), remarks concerning the more recent addition of 

 studies as follows : 



" We would specify among other subjects recently added to the programme of studies 

 at Neustadt-Eberswalde, microscopic examinations of vegetable tissues, a general knowl- 

 edge of the lower organizations, which, from their parasitic habits, ai'e a determinate 

 cause of a great number of maladies in plants and animals, and which are likewise 

 agents in fermentation. Furthermore, we might specify the elements of organic chem- 

 istry, which are indispensable to an understanding of the laws of vegetable physiology ; 

 some ideas of forest-statistics, one of the principal and most urgent of the desiderata 

 of every well-ordered administration ; a glance at the history of forests, and of the 

 various phases through which the sciences relating to it have passed ; and, finally, the 

 elements of meteorology, which, by setting the forest agents to the pursuing of obser- 

 vations of this kind, will lead us to a certain knowledge of the influence still so con- 

 troverted, as to the influence of the forests upon the climate of a country, and upon 

 the delivery and maintenance of the sources of supply of the water which fertilizes it. 

 All these new ideas are doubtless useful, and may, without difficulty, be included in 

 our course of forest instruction." 



Since 1872, the principal station for experiments relating to forest matters in Prussia, 

 on which there is conferred, at the same time, the management of the transactions of 

 the Association for German Experimeual Stations relating to Forest Matters, is connected 

 with the academy at Neustadt-Eberswalde in this way, that the latter's superintendent 

 is also the director of the principal station, and that, under his direction, the instructors 

 of the academy are elaborating the different divisions of the experimental work, viz, 

 the forest technical, the chemical, physical, the meteorological, the zoological observa- 

 tions, and also what relates to physiology of plants. 



This opens, on one hand, a large field of scientific researches to the teachers, putting 

 At their disposal new teaching matter, and gives, on the other hand, to students the 



