318 , Great Britain. 
and a strong movement is on foot, led by foresters 
returned from India, to commit the government to 
some action with reference to the waste lands, and 
towards providing for educational means. 
The government, although various committees 
have recommended it, has remained callous in this 
respect also, except that in 1904 the Commissioners 
of Woods and Forests instituted a school (one in- 
structor) in the Forest of Dean for the education of 
woodsmen and foremen. 
As illustrative of the government’s peculiar attitude 
to forest policy in general, we may note a curious 
anachronism, namely the act of 1894, which relieves 
railway companies from liability for damage from 
locomotive fires, if they can prove that they have 
exercised all care, although traction engines cannot 
offer this excuse. 
The first attempt to secure educational facilities 
dates to 1884 when a chair of forestry was established 
in the Royal Engineering College at Cooper’s Hill, 
an institution designed to prepare for service in India 
purely. Through private subscriptions another chair 
of forestry was instituted in 1887 at the Univer- 
‘sity of Edinburgh, and, at present, several agricultural 
colleges, notably that of Cirencester and the Univer- 
sities of Cambridge and Oxford, had made provisions 
for teaching the subject in a way, but outside of Cooper’s 
Hill no adequate education in forestry was obtainable 
in Great Britain, until 1905. 
In 1905, the forest department in Cooper’s Hill was 
transferred to Oxford, the three years’ course—one 
year to be spent in the forests of Germany or other 
