26 AN AUSTRALIAN STUDY OF AMERICAN FORESTRY. 
Apart from general instruction in forestry, supplementary tc the study 
of agriculture, &c., or as part of a general education, the committee recognised 
two distinct grades of forestry training, viz. :— 
(1.) Advanced professional training. 
(2.) Secondary education for forest rangers. 
In the first case, it was laid down that the educational requirements 
should be “at least equal to those of the other learned professions, such as 
civil and mechanical engineering, law, medicine, &c.” 
The need for a thorough foundation in subjects of general educational 
character was clearly realised, and a collegiate training in history, economics, 
English and foreign languages, as well as in botany, geology, and other 
auxiliary scientific subjects, was advocated. “It was agreed that the course 
should comprise at least four years of undergraduate work, and in the case of 
post-graduate schools there should be at least one year of post-graduate work 
in technical forestry, making a five-year course altogether.” 
In the second case, secondary education in forestry was said to be chiefly 
concerned with rules of thumb and their local application, not requiring as a 
foundation so high an order of general educational attainments. It aimed at 
teaching the trade, rather than the science, and giving a practical training 
rather than an education; and its object to “turn out skilled workmen 
capable of doing all of the less technical operations required in managing 
forest lands and of directing unskilled labour, as foremen.” It endeavoured 
to fit men for the positions of rangers, guards, fire wardens, patrolmen, 
lookout-men, lumbermen, timber cruisers, logging contractors, and managers 
of woodland estates. 
The committee affirmed— 
“Tt must be squarely recognised that the purpose of ranger 
schools is not to train professional foresters, and that their graduates 
are to occupy relatively subordinate positions at low salaries!” 
The entrance requirements were to be a high school training or its 
equivalent, good health, character, and physical fitness. The age was to be 
18-25 years. 
“The course of training was to be one year of forty weeks. The subjects 
were to be— 
(1.) Fundamental—Fire protection, forest engineering, surveying, 
estimating and scaling timber, forest botany, elementary 
silviculture, lumbering, and preparation of forest maps. 
(2.) Secondary—More advanced silviculture, more advanced lumber- 
ing, forest insects and diseases, camping and woods trans- 
portation, first aid. 
(3.) Special—Elementary business law, State forest law and policy, 
Federal forest law and policy, elements of bookkeeping, time- 
keeping, and official accounting, local forest zoology, the 
protection and cultivation of fish, the protection and breeding 
of economic wild birds and animals, grazing and other 
secondary uses of the forest, topographic surveying and 
mapping, forest mensuration, elements of forest Managem nt, 
utilisation of special forest products, principles of agriculture.” 
