FIFTH NATIONAL CONSERVATION CONGRESS 161 



intellectual requirements approximate those equivalent to the senior year in high 

 schools in this country. The students usually enter the school at the age of 

 eighteen but are required to spend a year before entering as apprentices on a 

 forest under management, in order to become familiar with the woods and learn 

 something of what forestry and forests mean. 



The work in the various Prussian schools is very similar, the course covering 

 but a single year. The instruction is elementary so that the student is thoroughly 

 well grounded on the essentials and not given a smattering of many technical 

 subjects which are not only beyond his need but for which he has not had the 

 necessary scholastic preparation. 



The course of instruction comprises the following subjects :* 



1. Silviculture in connection with dendrology and ecology. 



2. Lumbering and road-building. 



3. Forest protection in connection with forest zoology and meteorology. 



4. Forest mensuration. 



5. Hunting. 



6. Ichthyology (fish culture). 



7. Agriculture, Horticulture, Bee-keeping. 



8. Forest book-keeping. 



9. Forest and hunting laws. 



10. Insurance. 



11. General training in culture courses and elementary sciences. 



12. Physical training in gymnastics, swimming, shooting, etc. 



As far as possible these subjects are illustrated by means of frequent ex- 

 cursions. 



At the completion of the course a rigid examination is held and, in the 

 government schools, those who pass can, after their period of military service, 

 take the ranger examinations for the position of forester (ranger) as vacancies 

 occur. 



The sub-committee is indebted to Mr. T. S. Woolsey, jr., for the following 

 translation from the curriculum of a ranger school at Barres, France. In this 

 school the aim is to make the instruction practical. The students are expected 

 to perform all phases of a ranger's work in the forest and make numerous maps 

 and reports. The course covers but one year and the time is nominally divided 

 as follows: 195 lectures or recitations of one and one-half hours each; 15 days 

 of field work in typical forests ; 70 half days of field mapping and office drafting; 

 and 70 half days of manual labor in the forest (nursery work, transplanting, etc.). 

 The course also includes sixty military conferences of one and one-half hours 

 each. 



The following is a brief summary of the subjects covered: 



I. Forest botany: 



The life of the tree in general; factors effecting vegetation; forest species 

 (description, determining characteristics in winter and summer; principal species; 

 secondary species, forest weeds). 



' See Forestry Quarterly Vol. XI, pp. 50-51. 



