2 



Forestry Education. 



[APRIL, 



Departmental Committee, it is in order that it may get its 

 advice, and having got its advice, that it may act upon it ; and 

 the Committee to which the noble Lord has called attention is 

 no exception to the rule. I am happy to think that that Com- 

 mittee had the advantage of being presided over by a Member 

 of the other House of Parliament who has always taken a very 

 great interest in this question, and that upon this Committee 

 was also one of the Commissioners of His Majesty's Woods and 

 Forests, Mr. E. Stafford Howard, who also takes a very deep 

 interest in the question of afforestation ; and it is to his 

 exertions and initiative that we owe the first steps which have 

 already been taken in this matter. 



" There are many areas of land belonging to the Crown which 

 lend themselves to these purposes. There are the extensive 

 Alice Holt Woods in Hampshire, which cover a large area of 

 ground, but which I believe have not in time past been planted 

 and worked on the most scientific principles ; and although it 

 was proposed by the Committee that the first experiment in this 

 direction should be tried in these woods, it was found, on further 

 consideration, that a more promising sphere of operations offered 

 tself in the Highmeadow Woods of the Forest of Dean. With- 

 out any assistance from the Treasury — an assistance which we 

 always welcome, but do not always receive — the Com- 

 missioners of Woods and Forests have already established a 

 school of forestry in the Forest of Dean. That school will be 

 primarily for the purpose of educating men of the class of wood- 

 men. They will pass through a course of instruction there 

 which it is believed will fit them to become foremen on the 

 large estates of those landowners who are prepared to devote 

 time and money to this object. . . . We fully hope that the 

 experiment which Mr. Stafford Howard is trying in the Forest 

 of Dean will result in training young woodmen in the same way 

 that we are training young gardeners at Kew. 



" The Department over which I have the honour to preside has 

 no responsibility in regard to Scotland, but the Scottish Orifice 

 has not been any more supine in this matter than has the Board 

 of Agriculture and Fisheries, and I am informed that, again 

 through the agency and assistance of the Office of Woods 

 and Forests, communications have been entered into with 



