AN AUSTRALIAN STUDY OF AMERICAN FORESTRY, 33 
It is axiomatic that what a forest school should be depends, in the first 
instance, upon what its graduates should be: its constitution depends upon 
its objects. 
The essential purpose of projected Australian forest schools is to produce 
officers for Forest Service work not as it is now nor as it will be in a far 
distant future, but as it should be for the extension of efficiency in the handling 
of immediate problems. Its especial task is to train men to carry out the 
practical work of forest rangers and overseers; but with such a professional 
foundation that they may expand that function to a broader and higher phase, 
aud with due experience qualify for promotion to the superior grades of the 
forest service, where they will be called upon to handle weightier matters and 
solve the more complex problems of forest administration. 
-The immediate problems of Australian forestry are those mainly of 
erganisation, investigation, and standardisation. 
The making of topographical surveys and forest classifications and valua- 
tions, the preparation of forest maps, the planning of forest protection and 
improvements, logging engineering, the appraisal of stumpage values and 
consequent logging and milling studies, the development of timber sale 
policies, forest mensuration and finance, forest laws and regulations, adminis- 
trative methods and systems, the study of silviculture, of problems ‘of natural 
and artificial regeneration and of forest tending, the development of silvi- 
cultural systems, the working out of marking rules and conditions of exploita- 
tion, the study of trees and their growth, of little-used woods and products 
and their extended utilisation, timber grading and seasoning, inauguration of 
medern logging and milling procedures, regulation of forest grazing, publicity 
and education of public opinion, labour-saving and efficiency engineering, the 
planning and standardisation of methods and the development of systems, the 
conduct of general research into all. matters of forestry expansion and the 
publication of the results; and finally, the preparation of text books on 
Australian forestry—these are some of the questions demanding the attention 
of the Australian Forestry Schools and their trainees. 
In organising the forest school in the Philippines, the “ necessity for 
research work was felt from the beginning, and every effort was made to accom- 
plish as much as the limited funds and personnel would permit. The work 
was placed in charge of a division of investigation attached to the forest school, 
te which was attached a forest of 15,000 acres offering many local opportuni- 
lies for local research work, and affording a demonstration ground for the 
students. Here are located a forest nursery and tree plantations maintained 
largely by student labour. The members of the division of investigation 
constitute the teaching staff of the school.” (Major G. P.. Ahern before the 
Society of American Foresters—December, 1915.) 
Of an original forest area of 800,000,000 acres, the United States of 
America Forest Service now holds only 164,000,000 acres. The balance, 
comprising the greater part of the forest estate, is in the hands of large timber 
corporations who secured them for a song in the earlier days. The springing-up 
of forest schools throughout the country was in large measure a direct response 
to the needs of these timber companies who required foresters to manage 
their lumber-lands. The Forest Service came later. 
As a consequence, the forest schools are all either private concerns or 
off-shoots of universities, and, although there is a Forest Service section of 
research, there is no purely Forest Service scheme of staff training. 
