Ixxxiv heport — 1900, 



fit them for their future duties. The work of a forest officer calls espe^ 

 cially for those powers of observation and inference which natural-history 

 studies are peculiarly fitted to encourage. Young men with an aptitude 

 for such studies would seem to be material which the Secretary of State 

 "vould naturally desire to secure for filling the ofiices in question. 



But the mode of selection at present in use, so far from favouring, is 

 distinctly antagonistic to such an end. 



In the first place, the present age- limit of twenty is exercising an 

 unfavourable influence, since it prevents the entrance into the service of 

 men who have had a university training. Training in natural-history 

 studies is, at present at least, very imperfectly carried out in our Public 

 Schools, even in the best of them ; it is to our Universities and not to our 

 Schools that we must look for young men trained in these studies ; and 

 such men are excluded by the present age-limit. It may be worth while 

 to point out here that some of the ablest Indian forest officers in the past 

 have been men of university training who entered the service at a time 

 when the age-limit was very difierent from what it is now. 



In the second place, the examination, by means of which candidates 

 are selected, does not tend to the selection of men of natural-history, or 

 even of scientific, aptitude. 



The examination in question is the same as that for the Indian Police 

 Department, with the exception that German is compulsory. My Council 

 believe that the Secretary of State for India will agree with them 

 in thinking that a system of examination, which may be the best 

 for the selection of officers of the Police Depai'tment, whose duties are 

 simply administrative, cannot be expected to be the best for the selection of 

 officers of the Forest Department, whose duties should be distinctly scientific. 

 They therefore submit respectfully, but most earnestly, to the Secretary of 

 State, the desirability of making some marked changes in the method of 

 selection of candidates for the forest service in India. 



They would wish in the first place to suggest to him whether it would 

 not be possible to recruit the service, in part at least, directly from the 

 Universities, by placing some of the vacancies at the disposal of young 

 men who, by their university career, had given evidence of their aptitude 

 for natural-history studies and work, and a promise of success in the 

 application of such studies to forestry. In any case, they would urge the 

 importance of so extending the age-limit as not to exclude men who have 

 had a university training. 



And they may here state that they understand that the candidates, 

 who are selected from passed Students of the " Institut Agronomique " 

 and the " Ecole Polytechnique " for admission to the French Forest school 

 at Nancy, must have acquired the university degree of Bachelier es 

 Sciences. 



In the second place, they desire to urge the importance of so modifying 

 the nature of the entrance examination as to specially adapt it to securing 

 efficient forest officers. 



The forest officer needs, in addition to other general qualifications, a 

 kno.vledge of botany and an aptitude for natural-history studies. No 

 proper grasp of botanical science can be gained without an adequate 

 elementary knowledge of physics and chemistry. And the examination 

 which would seem best calculated to select the fittest men for the forest 

 service would be one in which prominence was given to botany, and to 

 physics and chemistry as introductory to that science, with an adequate 



