January 21, 19C9J 



NA TURE 



353 



higher class of labour, and such men can, if desired, be 

 recruited through labour colonies, distress committees, 

 labour bureaux, or charitable agencies. There is, then, 

 no need to accept inefficient labour with the object of 

 affording occupation to the unemployed. The labour 

 employed in the national forests should not fall below the 

 ordinary standards, and should be remunerated at the 

 ordinary rate of the district for similar labour. Subject to 

 the requisite standard of elViciency being attained, prefer- 

 ence should be given to those temporarily or permanently 

 unemployed in the district, especially where evidence of 

 such efficiency can be furnished by public or private 

 agencies for the reclamation and training of the 

 unemployed class. 



(17) To establish afforestation on commercial lines does 

 not, however, preclude its being used as an instrument of 

 social regeneration. .\ broad view of economics cannot 

 exclude from its cognisance the grave national charge 

 which unemployment with all its concomitant results 

 involves, to say nothing of the personal deterioration by 

 which it is often accompanied. Sylviculture is not un- 

 suitable for building up the moral and physical fibre of 

 <-ven the most depressed of the unemployed classes, and its 

 agency may well be invoked for this purpose, and advantage 

 taken' of its healthy and wholesome influences, provided 

 that any additional expense incurred by the employment 

 of less' efficient labour be defrayed from a separate 

 account. 



(iS) In estimating the amount of employment furnished 

 bv afforestation, it is well to distinguish between the 

 temporary labour involved in the creation of the forest 

 and the permanent labour needed for its maintenance. 

 Taking varying circumstances into consideration, it may 

 be said that, on the average, it will take twelve men to 

 afforest too acres in the planting season of four to five 

 months, and that every too acres afforested will provide 

 permanent employment for at least one man. If 150,000 

 acres be annually taken in hand, the labour of 18,000 men 

 will be needed, and permanent employment will in due 

 course be aflforded to 1500 men, rising by an additional 

 1500 every year until the end of the rotation. The number 

 permanently employed would then approach 100,000. The 

 labour absorbed by felling and converting timber, to say 

 nothing of subsidiary industries which spring up around a 

 timber supply, has been considered too remote to warrant 

 detailed estimation, but there is undoubtedly a large field 

 of employment in this connection. It is important to 

 remember that, on the basis of 1,000,000/. being annually 

 spent on the operations of afforestation, apart from the 

 cost of the land, employment would be afforded, directly 

 and indirectly, to many more than 18,000 men. Indeed, 

 the number employed may be roughly taken to be repre- 

 sented by about double that figure. For the incidental 

 occupations, such as building, the making of implements, 

 the provision of materials, &c., all involve the employment 

 of additional labour. 



fio) .\ special advantage of forestry in relation to 

 labour is that it offers a new source of employment. The 

 labour connected with timber and timber products imported 

 into the country is performed abroad, and thousands of 

 families are maintained on the produce of the labour 

 associated with the timber industry. .Another advantage 

 bound up with the extension of sylviculture is that the 

 market for its produce is so great that it is incon- 

 ceivable that it could seriously interfere with the out- 

 put from private woodlands, and no difficulty of 

 competition between the .State and individuals need be 

 apprehended. 



(20) The acquisition of grazing areas, private or common, 

 for sylviculture might necessitate a modification of the 

 existing agricultural system on certain farms. It is un- 

 reasonable to suonose that the remaining lowland areas 

 on such farms could not, in many cases, either be .adapted 

 to other forms of agriculture or be profitably utilised for 

 small holdin,'*s. Further, the conversion of comp.nratively 

 unprofitable lands into forests enhances the productiveness 

 of the adiacent areas, and should materially assist the 

 ■^mall holdings movement. It has also the advantage of 

 furnishing winter employment to small holders. 



NO. 2047, \'OI.. 7()1 



SCIEACE MASTERS IN CONFERENCE. 

 "T^HE Association of Public School Science Masters held 

 ■*• its ninth annual meeting at the Merchant Taylors' 

 -School on January 12, under the presidency of Sir Clifford 

 .Allbutt, K.C.B., F.R.S., who delivered an address entitled 

 " The Function of Science in Education." 



" If," he said, " our fathers looked out from a darker 

 world upon a narrower dawn, it was upon an intenser 

 light and a nearer vision than ours. We know better 

 where we are, it is true; we can see more — we certainly 

 run after more ; but are we pressing as keenly forward on 

 the line of promise? We are cutting and paving the road 

 better for the throng upon the route ; but the engineer 

 who maps and makes the road may be too busy to regard 

 the forerunners who, heedless of moss and rock, are cry- 

 ing to the multitude to cast aside every weight and race 

 forwards to the light. Still, both prophet and engineer 

 are needful to us, and it is a straight and business-like 

 inquiry for men of science to ask themselves how far 

 they are engineers, how far prophets. 



" The home and the school should develop the service of 

 the child, the imagination of the child, his intellect, and 

 his ethics. Morals cannot yet be explained to him scien- 

 tifically ; the help of science to ethics will be recognised 

 later. If scientific training does not generate the passion 

 for righteousness, by its ordinances these aspirations are 

 directed and fortified. Until the conceptions of modern 

 science had permeated us, we had no full sense of the 

 unity of society nor of our duty to our neighbour. As 

 now the survival of the fittest has become an emulation, 

 not of individuals, but of social groups, it is the most 

 coherent groups which will govern the earth. In science 

 may be discovered the sanctions of simplicity, sincerity, 

 and brotherhood to chasten a luxurious age, such as in 

 former times literature alone, even an Augustan literature, 

 failed 10 regenerate. 



" What do we mean by science? We do not contemplate 

 experimental science only, we include the pristine idea of 

 all orderly knowledge, of analysis of concepts for the con- 

 struction of systems of affirmative propositions. There is 

 no branch of education, or of the business of life for which 

 it is to fit us, which science is not busily re-handling, re- 

 modelling, and re-interpreting. This is not to say that the 

 methods you and I represent are to become sole inasters 

 of mankind, .\ction may be sicklied o'er by too much 

 thought, bv too much analysis, and herein is engendered 

 that distrust — reasonable and unreasonable — which the 

 humanist has always felt of the man of science. The 

 humanist winces to see the flower of literature stiffened 

 into a diagram. Mv point of view demands the pursuit 

 of what is called ' classical ' culture, not as in itself 

 education, but as a constituent of education. 



" The British boy, generically speaking, is a very 

 matter-of-fact little person ; very serious, very curious, and 

 very handv. It is from his great example man that he 

 may learn flippancv, satiety, mental inertia. In our educa- 

 tional methods do' we foster the precious seriousness of 

 the boy? Do we feed his curiosity, or do we snub and 

 disgust it, so that when he leaves school all or much of 

 his natural ardour for knowledge is blighted? .Ml school- 

 masters must learn, what the science-master can teach 

 them, that, if bv his own hands the boy can contrive no 

 great art, vet it is immediately by promoting the activity 

 and precision of his nervomuscular system that nature is 

 building up, not his practical brain only, but also much 

 of the hive of his mind— not to mention the congruities 

 of bodily sanity. The boy will tolerate drudgery if his 

 seriousness is not fatigued^ and if his eyes are lifted con- 

 tinually over the dry intermediate task to realise what 

 he is to see at the end of the hard high road. He must be 

 led, not only to do the right things, but also to enjov 

 them. (By the wav, is there a public-school playing-field 

 in England which has been accurately surveyed and mapoed 

 bv the bovs?) The boy's curiosity might be better 

 cherished bv a more comprehensive literary outlook. By 

 the new history, the new archaeology, the new geography, 

 the ' classics ' are indeed becoming more of a living sub- 

 iect : we are bold enough to claim that it is by science 

 that these changes have been wrought, and that, with- 



