28 AN AUSTRALIAN STUDY OF AMERICAN FORESTRY. 
“The forest ranger is now an important official of the service. He has 
charge of a district, the extent and importance of which would be a responsi- 
bility and a source of pride to the ober forester of a German State.” 
“ He is not a drawer of water and hewer of wood, but rather an important 
official, intrusted with the business of organising and operating forest district. 
He is intrusted with the care of valuable resources. He directs the work of 
subordinates and employs and pays wages to labour. The welfare and content 
of individuals and families, and even of entire communities, or villages or 
towns, depend upon his judgment, ability, and integrity. He must transact 
business and meet on a level with men of ability and education and culture. 
He has to do with the management of land and must be able to make surveys 
and construct maps and to read them and use them. He has to do particularly 
with timber, and must-understand wood and its uses and values. He must 
know how to determine the methods and costs of production. While attending 
‘to the harvest of the present crop, he must look to the continuity of a future 
supply. His work is by no means merely that of administration, and is, in no 
little part, silvicultural. Unless for every dollar paid to the ranger and his 
subordinates there be paid to overheads a nearly equal amount for supervision 
and direction, he must understand the basic principles of tree culture and the 
care and protection of woodlands, and the guidance of their growth and 
maturity.” 
“We are by the point when we may complacently dally with the idea that 
the ranger need be only superficially trained in the practical phases of his 
work, or that a technical training in the sciences of forestry will leave him™ 
unfit to practise the arts of forestry.” 
“Tn my opinion, hardly less important to the Forest Service than the 
quality of the work secured is the proper training of subordinates to assure a 
sufficient supply of satisfactory men as material for promotion. 
“The work of the forest ranger is nécessarily largely of an executive 
nature, and if his training has been sufficient, the very nature of his work is 
to prepare him for administrative positions of more importance.” 
Thus is developing the idea that the forest ranger is to be trained in the 
“theory and principle,” as well as the “art and method ” of all the primary 
branches of forestry. Surely this also will be the Australian attitude, both 
because of its democratic tendencies and because Australian forestry is also 
in the pioneering stages, and “ what a forest officer should be” is much the 
-same in both countries. 
The West is to be the place for these great new undergraduate schools of 
forestry, among some of the vastest forests in the world. Already there are at 
least two such schools in existence, one attached to the University of Montana 
at Missoula, of which Mr. Skeels is Dean, and another, its closest rival, that 
of the University of Washington, at Seattle. 
Both of these schools I visited. In the first I gained an intimate view of 
its organisation and methods—the substantial development of the ideas set 
forth by Mr. Skeels in his paper above referred to. 
