EDUCATION IN FORESTRY. 57 



necessarily be thoroughly versed in stock and range management. The ranger 

 here may be primarily a cattleman. 



In the Northwest there is more timber, and shortly, if not now, the ranger 

 will be in constant touch with logging work. Here the ranger should be pri- 

 marily a woodsman. The conservative logging-boss stripe of man is an 

 effective ranger. 



In the cut-over and burned forests of Pennsylvania the more advanced 

 mountain farmer makes the best ranger. He is often a logging trained 

 woodsman in addition, for not many years ago farming a mountain farm in 

 summer and being a lumber jack in the winter was a common and profitable 

 combination of vocations. 



2. Should, therefore, there be no ranger schools at all? Although the majority 

 of rangers and lower forest officers of foreman grade will, for some time to 

 come, be drawn from this practical work-trained class of men, yet among the 

 younger and more ambitious of these men there is some demand for better 

 training in a few special lines. It may be range-management for some, for 

 others timber estimating and scaling, road and trail building, forest mapping, or 

 nursery management. There is room for a limited number of ranger schools 

 now. For strictly ranger work they should encourage mainly the ranch, woods, 

 #nd farm boys. 



As forestry conditions improve and the professional foresters are able to 

 oecome real practicing woods foresters in place of propagandists and virgin 

 timber sale administrators, there will be a demand for more training on the 

 part of under foresters to carry out their share of forest development. As thesi* 

 vocational schools become more and more forest trade schools, the term " ranger 

 school " will become a misnomer. They should be called " lower forest schools," 

 or " forest high schools." 



3. These schools should be carried on in connection with a real forest of 

 commercial size and under forest management. 



i. For the present, field trained men of experience may need only short 

 special courses of here six months, there three months, yonder a year. But 

 the final vocational forest school for real forestry practice, taking the stu- 

 dents from the public schools, must have at least two years in its course. In 

 regions where there is demand for nursery superintendents, planting assistants, 

 game preserve superintendents, and men of equivalent training, the time is now 

 ripe for such a course. 



5. For the present older practical, field-trained men the preparation required 

 for the lower forestry (ranger) courses should be grammar school education. 

 The course itself should be entirely "practice," with little or no basic science 

 or mathematics, and should last up to one year. It is a passing phase and is 

 not worth standardizing. 



The vocational school, as real forestry begins to arrive, should require a 

 two-year high-school training, and itself cover a period of two years, or should 

 cover four years above the grammar school. It should give science and 

 mathematics along with the strong field courses. In fact it should offer 

 electives enough to permit the brighter and more ambitious to go into the 

 professional course. 



6. It is not thought that the curriculum for that ranger school that deals 

 with the older field- trained man can or should be standardized. Gary's list 

 in the 1911 Conservation Report covers the necessities, somewhat rearranged 

 as follows : 



(a) Engineering and construction; 



Compass surveying and simple topographic mapping (plane table) ; 

 leveling; road and trail building; cabins and bridges; telephones; 

 trucks and mechanics. 



