For although her forests, particularly in the northern portion, seem inexhaustible, yet even among these the waste by accidental and designed burnings has at length shown the necessity of care and economy in forestry management. The forests of Russia have been swept off year by year by fires until portions of the country are suffering in a change of climate and in other respects as the consequence. The Volga is diminished in volume; navigation is becoming more difficult; fuel is getting scarce; and the services of those trained in forest schools are needed in Russia almost as much as they are in Italy or Spain.
The Agronomic Institute at St. Petersburg is designed to give the best education in both agriculture and sylviculture, and is organized for this purpose in two sections. Those admitted to it must have finished a course of instruction at some gymnasium. It has one hundred and fifty students in the forestry section, a three years' course of study, and graduates annually about forty pupils.
The Agricultural and Forestral Academy at Petrovsk, near Moscow, founded in 1865, is similar in character and course of instruction to the institute at St. Petersburg. In 1872 it had three hundred and thirty-three pupils in attendance.
About fifty miles from St. Petersburg is the forest school of Lissino, a school of the second class, whose graduates receive the rank of forest conductors. The course of studies is of a practical character, and is of three years in extent.[1]
- ↑ This sketch gives a partial idea of the importance that is attached to forestry in countries whose age and experience have carried them beyond the stage of wasteful expenditure of resources in wood through which we are passing, to the point where necessity compels them to do all that is possible to make amends for their former recklessness, and to endeavor by every means to restore what they have lost. The trees are recognized as one of man's most valuable inheritances—with which his fortunes, public and private, are intimately associated; and no interest in state or nation is paramount to that of having them preserved and properly cared for. The sources of information in regard to forestry and forest schools are of course as yet chiefly foreign. J. Croumbie Brown, of Haddington, England, for some time Government botanist at the Cape of Good Hope, has published several volumes bearing more or less directly on the subject. Hon. C. C. Andrews, late Minister to Sweden and Norway, has made a valuable report to the Department of State on the forests and forest-culture of Sweden. A report on forests and forestry, in connection with the International Exhibition at Vienna, in 1873, has also been made by John A. Warder, one of our commissioners. A voluminous report upon forestry has also been made, under the direction of the Commissioner of Agriculture, in pursuance of an act of Congress of 1876, by Franklin B. Hough, which contains a large amount of valuable information. We have drawn from these, in addition to the numerous French and German publications on forestry, for the facts here given in regard to forest schools.
