Part IL---An Australian Study. 
Cuapter. I. 
FORESTRY EDUCATION. 
_ Close in the wake of the developing forestry movement of the United States - 
of America followed a flood of enthusiasm for forestry education. 
In 1898 the first professional forest schools were opened at Cornell 
University and at Baltimore, almost simultaneously, under the auspices of 
two German foresters, viz., Dr. Fernow and Dr. Schenck. In 1899 a third 
was attached to Yale University, and in 1903 the University of Michigan 
adopted the fourth; after which, forest schools sprang up all over the United 
States of America like mushrooms in the night. 
At the present time there are something like twenty-five educational 
institutions which give a four-year graduate or undergraduate course leading 
to a degree in forestry; ten which give a one to three year undergraduate 
course; and no less than thirty which give a “ranger,” short, or general 
course. 
This was really frenzied over-production, tending to overorowd the 
profession before it had established itself. 
Nor was there a clear conception of the particular needs which were: to 
be supplied. American forestry was in the nebulous formative stage, and no 
definite lines of development had emerged. The schools hurriedly undertook 
to train men for work which had not yet been planned! 
It is no wonder that-the spirit of American forestry was lost in an 
absorption in European forms. The schools attempted to turn out technically- 
trained professional foresters, capable of developing far-reaching policies in 
intensive management of National, State, and private forests, and competent 
to apply them in actual practice. Confusion and indefinition made itself 
apparent. Great universities impartially and indiscriminately admitted to 
their graduate forestry courses undergraduates in art, science, agriculture, 
engineering, and even literature and law! 
Plenty of mediocre men were produced, but many of these schools failed 
to produce real foresters or even men of high technical training. In the great 
forest regions of the West arose a tendency to sneer at technical forestry and 
its graduates, who were generally put at the common work of the forest 
ranger, frequently never rising above it to practise their profession. 
It is true that the demand for technical men was limited, and that native 
force of character and ability counted for more than the highest educational 
attainment in these developmental days. It is true that “seniority” was a 
powerful qualification, as in Australia. But it is also true that these new 
forestry schools did not really supply the type of man required by the 
Fioneering forestry movement. 
In 1909 came the first attempt to standardise forestry education in the 
United States of America. Through the initiative of Gifford Pinchot, the first 
forester of the United States of America Forest Service, a conference of forest 
schools was held at Washington, D.C.,; to consider “the scope, grade, and 
curriculum that would afford the best training for foresters of the various 
grades, and a committee was appointed to prepare a plan for the standardisa- 
tion of forestry education in the United States of America. 
