THE ALLEGED SCIENCE OF FORESTRY.
[To THE EDITOR Or THE " SPECTATOR:1
SIR,'-4 read in your issue of September 14th that £350,000 is to be expended by the Development Commissioners "for education and research in forestry and afforestation." I have not seen the report of the Commissioners, and do not know how much of the money is to be spent in afforestation, how much in providing comfortable berths for needy individuals, how much in talkee-talkee ; but will you allow one who has spent all his active life as a forester to utter a warning against reckless expenditure on the so-called "science" of forestry ? There is no science of forestry in the sense in which there is, for example, a science of engineering or of chemistry. All the science that there is can be learned by any intelligent person who possesses a little elementary mathematics in three or six months ; the rest is practical experience. I mean that there are no general principles, or very few, which apply equally. to
North Germany, the Vosges, Italy, India, and England. The admirably trained German foresters, it is true, go through a theoretical course, but it is adapted solely to the local require- ments of the region in which they will serve ; their principal training is in years of practical work in the forests. Unfor- tunately, there is no profession which lends itself more easily to cant and charlatanry. The question of forestry in England is simply one of domestic policy and finance ; no scientific education is needed, or anything beyond a little common sense and extreme caution, for nothing is easier than to squander enormous sums upon visionary schemes of forestry. I write from ample personal experience of what can be done in this Late Bombay Forest Department.
Hamer, Pas de Calais.
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